Afternoon Fun

Our silly nephews came today and are spending the weekend with us while their mom and dad get a fun weekend away with friends. They were SOOO excited to come and I think our kids might have been even MORE excited than that! So far, it's been a loud, crazy time, but lots and lots of fun too. We decided since it was such a beautiful day (and the entire next week will be hot beyond belief) that we should take them to Starved Rock Park. The boys were game, so we left shortly after lunch.







As you can see, the shenanigans started early. ;-)








One of our first discoveries was this sycamore branch that the boys thought looked like camo. We now have 5 sticks of it in our house. Just glad they all decided that a branch taller than their daddy was too big to bring home and went with the sticks instead. ;-)

There were lots of informational rocks along the way, so we stopped at a bunch of them, so the kids could read them.

Then we walked up to the actual rock that named this park. Trevor and Ty were especially excited to be up there, since it was their first time visiting. They couldn't get over how far they could see!

Especially with these telescope thingies.

After such a long walk, up a lot of stairs, to get to the top of the rock, we took a little breather in the shade. It was a beautiful day, but still pretty warm.

Then we headed down the trail and went to the visitor center where they have a little museum of sorts. This is a replica of what Starved Rock looked like a long time ago. Pretty cool fort they used to have!

We looked at all the stuffed (real) animals they had. Saw the aquarium of river fish. Then we headed down to look at the indian artifacts they have found on site here.

They lined the walls with different owls and hawks. This one had a snake skin in it's talons. The kids thought this was really cool!

Of course, after all that, we had to stop and have our drinks and snacks!

In the lobby, there is this crosssection of tree that fell back in 2000. It dates back to before the civil war. The kids couldn't believe it. It was really big and even had a bullet hole in it from before 1900.

This is where it came from. All of the kids got on it and there was still room! It was an amazing tree!

They found a hawk feather, which they insisted I get a picture of.

Then we drove up to the lodge where they climbed the "Headless Man" statue.

And climbed a wood carving in front of the lodge. We also walked over a bridge and looked down into the canyon, which was cool. We thought about walking one of the trails that went into one of the canyons, but they were all getting pretty tired, so we headed home. Watched "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and they are now all in bed reading. It's been a fun day! Looking forward to whole new one tomorrow too. :-)