Downtown-part 1

We met Marcie, Amelia and Megan on the train to go downtown to play in Millennium Park.  The train was quite crowded once Marcie and her girls got on but we did manage to save seats.  Noah looked for Aunt Marcie, Amelia and Megan at every stop!

The kids really enjoyed sitting together.  Here are 2 pictures of them showing us their tickets-the first one everyone is looking at the camera but not all smiling and the second one there are more smiles but Megan's not looking at the camera.

We headed down to Millennium park and stopped to put sunscreen on.  Megan decided to show us what an acrobat she is!

We went to the bean and explored that for a while.

I thought the inside of the bean was so fun with all the angles and the distortions it made.  We're all in the bottom picture as well.  Can you find us?

Stay tuned for downtown part 2!  I'll have pictures of the fountain.

Glasses

Brian's students went to Build a Bear while in New York and made Brian a Mr. Weidner bear.  It's a bear with khaki shorts, a polo shirt and glasses.  Natalie has claimed the bear as her own.  The glasses really don't stay on the bear's head at all so most times they just lay on the floor.  Natalie loves the glasses!  She puts them on all the time.  I think she looks pretty cute with glasses which is good to know since she'll probably need them seeing as how Brian and I have had glasses forever!

The Crown Fountain part 2

I know I haven't posted the Crown Fountain pictures or any pictures from when we went downtown with Marcie and her girls but there are so many pictures!  There are much fewer pictures for this day!  I'll have to take some time to sort through the billion pictures soon!

We went downtown with Aunt Lisa, Charlie, and Grandma Weidner so that we could visit Grandpa Weidner at his work and have lunch with him.  He works just north of Millennium Park.  N2 and Charlie had a great time on the train.  They all sat with Aunt Lisa and Grandma the whole time!  It was nice!

We got down there early enough to visit the bean and play in the Crown Fountain.  N2 tried to hold up the bean by themselves!  What a strenuous job!

Charlie and Noah had a great time playing in the fountain.  Noah went up to the wall and would touch the wall and then run away.  I'm not sure if he touched the wall last time or not.  Natalie for some reason was unwilling to go in the fountain.  I finally dragged her in (crying) and forced her to have a good time (how bad is that?)  She finally decided it was fun to run in circles and chase mommy and daddy in the fountain.  By this time both Noah and Charlie were done playing in the fountain.  Oh well! No idea what her hang up is with the fountain.  It wasn't cool like last time.

Not sure what Noah was intending to do here but he was facing east.

We listened to some of the rehearsal for an upcoming concert at the bandshell.  Then we walked over the bridge and went to Grandpa's building.  Aunt Lisa told N2 to look inside the building and look for Grandpa.

We ate lunch at Mariano's (yes, the grocery store).  They had so many food options-a huge salad bar, hot meals that change every day, a pizza take out that makes individual pizzas, a sandwich place and the deli had meal prices.  Everyone could get whatever they wanted!  After that we took the bus back to the train station.  All the kids were tired but no one fell asleep on the train.

Baked Tilapia

I made this baked tilapia recipe to go along with my Spinach Pasta Salad for the food challenge.  This tilapia was yummy-the one end didn't get the crust on it because it was under another fillet.  Not the best picture!  I found the recipe here but I modified it a little bit.

Baked Tilapia

tilapia fillets

2 tbsp butter, melted

Juice of 1 lemon

several tbsps on fresh parsley chopped

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp onion powder

a pinch of paprika

a pinch of ginger

a pinch of nutmeg

a pinch of celery salt

freshly ground black pepper

2 tbsp Panko bread crums

1 tbsp Parmesan cheese

1 tbsp bread crumbs

Mix all the ingredients together and then add water to make 3/4 cup of liquid (or so).  Add the tilapia fillets to a gallon zip lock bag and pour in the marinade.  Squish things around until the tilapia fillets are covered in the liquid.  I used 3 fillets but you could probably use up to 4.  Marinate for as long as you want.

When it is time to cook, preheat oven to 375.  Put tilapia fillets in a pan and then pour some of the marinade over them.  You don't want too much liquid but you want enough that the tilapia won't stick to the pan.  Cook for 15 minutes.  While fish is cooking mix 2 tbsp of panko bread crumbs, 1 tbsp of Parmesan cheese and 1 tbsp of regular bread crumbs.  After 15 minutes sprinkle this bread crumb mixture on top of fish and return to the oven.  Cook for 5 minutes more until fish is done.

Old World Wisconsin

We went up to Old World Wisconsin on the 24th of June because they were having a Swedish festival and I thought it would be fun to see the Swedish dances-around a maypole.  But we saw none of the Swedish festival.  When we got there, they had just gone to lunch and when we got back from seeing all the sites, the festival was done.  Oh well!  We had a nice time at Old World Wisconsin although it was a tad hot!

Old World Wisconsin is broken down into little villages by ethnicity.  I believe they said that all of the buildings were brought to this historic site from other places in Wisconsin but all the buildings were original.  We started in the German area because they have an experience the farm exhibit.  We were told that there were animals you could touch which is why we started there but it didn't seem that we could touch the animals.  The first thing N2 got to do was grind grain.  They thought that was fun!

Each of us took on a role at the farm.  N2 were the children (who were much older but they had no young kids roles).  They had chores they had to do.  One of the chores was to put on wooden clogs, walk to the chicken coop and collect an egg.  Natalie and daddy started out first.  It was really hard to walk in the wooden clogs!  Quite uncomfortable as well.

Natalie did not want to venture inside the hen house so she did not complete her chore.  Noah and I set off next.  I was planning on sending Brian again so I could get pictures but he said it was my turn so I don't have good pictures of Noah.  I could not walk in the shoes and take pictures.

Noah did go in the hen house.  All the way in the back corner there were eggs.  The roof was slanted and there was wood down the middle of the house that made it extremely difficult for me to get in the space where the eggs were but Noah could get back there and he did.  But a chicken went over and guarded the eggs and I couldn't shoo the chicken from where I was and Noah was not brave enough to reach down and grab an egg with a chicken standing over them.  So no egg for us.  But I'm proud of how far he got!  Their second chore was the wash or dry dishes (which they did not complete) and their third task was to help the mom of the house make cookies.  They didn't help with that either.  I didn't have a chance to try to complete my jobs (which included sewing quilt squares together).  There were quite a few farm animals and they enjoyed looking at the animals.  The chickens were all loose and they enjoyed running after chickens.

There are 2 oxen at Old World Wisconsin.  We had never seen oxen before!

The distance between villages was quite large so they have trams running that takes you from one village to the next.  Even between the farms there was a little distance.  We explored all the farms in the German area.

Then we visited the Norwegian area where there was a school house.  We thought N2 would enjoy seeing what a school would look like.  We sat down in the little school desks/benches and the "teacher" told us all about school a long time ago.  Natalie thought the slate and the little pencil (it wasn't chalk) was really fun!

After the visit to the school, we took the tram to the Crossroads Village and went to the Town Hall where they had games that children used to play.  N2 loved experimenting with the toys in there.  Noah in particular loved the carved wooden ark with the carved animals inside.  N2 each tried their hand at rolling the hoop around.  They weren't too interested.

After that we visited the blacksmith but N2 were really tired and hot by that point so we didn't stay long.  We grabbed the tram back to the visitor's center and headed home.  It was a fun place to visit and I think it would be fun to go to an old fashioned baseball game there!

Disclaimer: It appears that I take more pictures of Natalie and that probably is the truth.  When Noah sees a camera, he immediately turns his head away and will not turn it back until the camera is safely put away and there is no chance that he will get his picture taken again.  Natalie is very willing to smile for the camera most of the time.

Just like mommy

While we were at the Niabi zoo N2 decided that they needed to be just like mommy.  Can you spot what makes them like me?

Here's Natalie being like Daddy.  I love this picture.  It was taken at the Henry Doorly zoo in Omaha.

Field Museum

We went to the Field Museum on Tuesday.  N2 seem really interested in animals and dinosaurs so we thought that they might enjoy the Field Museum this year.  We started by looking at Sue and then took a look at a few of the stuffed animals.  N2 are so used to zoos so they wanted the animals to move!  They found a staircase so we headed upstairs instead of looking through the rest of the animals.  We saw the dinosaur exhibit next.  You have to go through an exhibit called the Evolving Planet before you can get to the dinosaur bones.  It's really neat how it walks you through the history of the earth and the creatures that lived during those periods.  At the beginning they play some eerie music (it's not really eerie but I guess to Noah it was).  Noah kept saying it wanted to get out of this place.  I hurried along with him to find the dinosaur bones.  He was mostly interested in them.  Natalie found the buttons for each dinosaur that when you pressed them a kid pronounced the name of the dinosaur for you.  I think she pushed each button 15 times.  By the end of pushing the button she could kind of say the names of the dinosaurs.  N2 found a footprint of an apatosaurus to sit in.

There was also a real dinosaur bone that you could touch!

After lunch we went to the Inside Ancient Egypt exhibit.  I seem to remember more hands on things there.  They must have gotten rid of them!  Both N2 were fascinated with mummies.  Natalie and I got separated from Brian and Noah and we eventually found them after Natalie told me she wanted to see more mummies. Noah and Brian had been looking at the mummies the whole time!  There are several dioramas that show how they turned a body into a mummy which Noah found extremely fascinating.  Noah said his favorite part was when we went into the pyramid part upstairs and got to look down at where one of the mummies was buried.  N2 did try to move a pyramid block by themselves.  Don't hire them to build your next pyramid!

We  then wandered through more of the stuffed animals (which Natalie said was her favorite part).  I remember thinking that the animals were really neat when I was younger but the whole time I was there this time I just kept thinking of what a waste it was to kill these animals to put them in a museum.  There was a lion with 4 baby cubs that had to be less than a week old.  Brian did read a sign that talked about it and most of the animals were brought to the museum before the existence of zoos.  So the only way people could see exotic animals was this way.  Some of the animals were killed because they were predators and a problem in a specific region.  Then the animals were donated to the zoo.  Others were killed for the purpose of putting them in the museum.  The animals that are more recent (like one of their panda bears) were ones that died for whatever reason in a zoo and then stuffed and given to the museum.  That made me feel slightly better!  Ok, getting off my soapbox.

We headed back upstairs to see the gems because Brian said Noah was really interested in rocks.  N2 were not impressed by the gems.  I was!  After that it was time to go home.  There is a family play lab that is only open Thursday-Monday and maybe it would have been more fun for N2 if we had gone on a day that it was open.  Oh well, next time!