Lisbon, Wisconsin

The kids and I decided to drive a bunch today and get home and we decided to show up and surprise Nole and Cal.

First though we had one last Junior Ranger Program to do! We stopped at the Lincoln Home in Springfield, Illinois. We took a guided tour of his house and also got to explore his neighborhood where they have stopped time in the 1860s and kept it just like it was when he lived there.

We learned some interesting things about the Lincolns from our tour guide. The Lincoln boys were known to be very rambunctious and Ave and Mary raised them with no rules. Abe liked to spoil them and bought them expensive toys. He was also known to wrestle around with the boys in the living room.

Abe was a crazy cat lady! Esme loved this bit of information. They would regularly have a dozen or more cats in the house and Abe would bring home stray kittens on his walk home from his law office.

After our tour we noticed this large green bug flying around. Asa found one on a leaf for me to take a picture of. We found out it is a Green June Beetle.

The girls got their badges and were surprised to receive both a plastic and a wooden badge here. They were wearing their Junior Ranger vests with the 20+ badges they earned on this trip.

I forgot to take a good picture of their vests in their full glory so I will try to take one tomorrow and update this post with the picture.

Then we drove to Peoria to check out Uncle Buck’s Fish Bowl and Grill. This was an underwater themed bowling alley and restaurant inside of a huge Bass Pro Shop. The kids had a great time and it broke up the drive.

We drove home from there, stopping once for gas and candy. Nova slept for a while, still worn out from the drive-in movie last night. When we were about 20 miles from home the kids got super excited and proceeded to make more noise in that half hour than they did all day. When we got home they first had to greet the cats then Dad and Cal. The girls were excited to get wifi (it’s been a while since they had some wifi and they wanted to call their cousin and their friends).

We are all happy to sleep in our beds tonight. There is lots of unpacking to do tomorrow but tonight we just relaxed and settled in.