Rose Gardens, Sensory Gardens, English Gardens, Aquatic Gardens-these are just a few of the beautiful gardens you will see on the 385 acres at the Chicago Botanic Gardens located at 1000 Lake Cook Rd. in Glencoe, IL. The garden features 23 display gardens and it is surrounded by lakes and beautiful waterfalls. Be sure to bring your camera! Admission to the gardens is a $20.oo parking fee and believe me it is well worth it!

As I walked around the gardens I saw plants I never heard of before and smelled different smells in each garden. If you get tired on walking, the gardens also have a 35 minute narrated tram tour that you can take for a small fee. If you get hungry or thirsty you can go to their very nice cafe that offers breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The Gardens also has a lovely photography and artwork display in the Regenstein Center. As you walk out of there you can see a great display of Bonsai trees. These are totally amazing. It is really interesting to see how one sculpts a tree and how they cut it and tie some branches down to make it have an aged look. There is also a beautiful Japanese Garden and home to see.

A very special place to take youngsters is the Miniature Train display that takes you thru the Landmarks of America. The display has the trains going up and under the bridges and thru high and low tunnels. A couple of the sights you will see are the Statue of Liberty and the White House. It also shows Wrigley Field with a big W behind it. The train is outside from May until the end of October and it is well worth the price of $5.00 to view for adults and $3.00 for children. The details and the work that goes into it is amazing.

As my husband and I continued our walk thru the gardens we stopped several times to enjoy the view from several of the many benches they have on the grounds. We really liked sitting on the benches by the huge waterfall watching the birds and looking at the water lillies.

We look forward to seeing the gardens when the season changes. I can only imagine how beautiful the fall colors will be.

[+/-] click to show/hide this post

Sunday was the perfect weather to be out at Antioch’s Taste of Summer Festival. It was sunny with a few threats of rain; however no drops hit us…simply perfect.


And how could I make perfection just get better? I will spell it out…f-u-n-n-e-l c-a-k-e. I haven’t had a funnel cake in years. We walked in the carnival area, just north of the band shelter and I saw it. The funnel cake stand. Sure they had other things like Elephant Ears and that awesome lemonade; however I bee-lined for the funnel cake. Thankfully, I was wearing a pink shirt so that powdered sugar wasn’t a nuisance when it sprinkled everywhere!


On to more tasty treats. We walked up and down the “Taste” booths and couldn’t decide. Did we want turkey wraps, BBQ ribs, Egg rolls, Dairy Queen Blizzards, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. etc. etc! You know…for the sake of this blog, I HAD to try something. And then I HAD to taste some of my husband’s food too! The sesame chicken and BBQ ribs (off-the-bone) were quite yummy!


Chiquita was even there blending up banana smoothies for those that wanted to try. They even had some fun costumes for the lil bananas in the crowd. Too cute!


There were carnival rides galore. Anything from twirling in circles, flying like Superman to bumper cars and spinning dragons. There was a ride suited for everyone!


American English, a Beatles cover band, was playing while we were enjoying ourselves. We took a few minutes to sit and enjoy the weather, the yummy food and good music! We saw many friends meeting up and families gathering around on picnic blankets. It was just wonderful.


There was a sidewalk sale in the downtown Antioch area. Many stores put their items out on the sidewalk to capture the foot traffic. There were even a couple of stores that opened especially for the event. (Thank you Rustique for opening - you are my favorite little store!)


Parking was within a block, so we were able walk off some of the yummy bites we had earlier. (I must admit that I purchased a strawberry cheesecake Blizzard for the road. Mmmmmm good!

I almost forgot…Antioch is bustling with activities on Thursdays during the summer. The farmers market begins at 3:00pm – 7:00pm. Then you can run over for the “It’s Thursday” concert series from 7:30pm – 9:00pm. We are definitely planning on heading back!

[+/-] click to show/hide this post

My husband and I took two of our grandsons to the Lake Wood Forest Preserve in Wauconda to see the display they have of Prehistoric Lake County at the Lake County Discovery Museum that is on their grounds until August 30th. The Museum is located on Route 176 just west of Fairfield Road. Admission is $6 for adults and $2.50 for youth ages four to seventeen. Discount day is on Tuesdays, adults $3 and children 17 and under free.

The display is divided into three geological time periods to discover sea creatures, dinosaurs, and ice age mammals. We touched rocks and fossils that dated back 400 million years. We also touched teeth, skulls and tusks from mammoths and mastodons. But the biggest highlight for the kids came when they got to dig in sandboxes for fossils and take a piece home with them. Even though these fossils were very tiny-they were excited about it.

Then we went out into the forest preserve for an adventure looking for any and all wild life. Finding fish and frogs, and even watched as grandpa pulled a turtle out of the water like a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat. Gavin wanted so much to bring the little turtle home. We had to explain to him that nothing can be taken away from the forest preserve. Carson was having fun watching the fish swim around in the lake. Grandma and Grandpa were just trying to keep up with them as they ran from one water spot to the next. When we wanted to leave, we had to use the fool proof tactic of going to go get ice-cream. The forest preserve is a great place to visit for the day.

[+/-] click to show/hide this post

I look forward to celebrating the 4th of July every summer. It means that summer is in full swing and we get an extra day off of work - which this year meant a long weekend! It has become a tradition for my family to go to the Lake Bluff 4th of July Parade every year - this was probably our 7th or 8th year straight attending. Each year we have a great time.

This parade always gets a good crowd. The parade runs through downtown Lake Bluff so people are lined up with lawn chairs on both sides of the street all through the downtown area. Many people wear red, white and blue so it feels very festive just being there.

Off to the side where the Lake Bluff Farmers Market is held normally, they had tents set-up where you could by burgers, hot dogs and other food and drinks. We stopped there on our way to finding a spot to watch the parade.

One of my favorite parts of the parade is always the marching bands - especially the drummers. This year we were able to hear a lot of them throughout the parade as there were marching bands from many different schools around the area in attendance. I also enjoyed seeing the cheerleaders and dancers. Every 4 or 5 minutes they would stop and put on a little routine. At one point a group of peewee cheerleaders came by, they were so cute, probably aged 3-6 and it was obvious they were loving being part of the parade. There is also a bagpipe group that march in the parade as well, they are so good, we love hearing them play!

Each year a group of Lake Bluff men take part in the parade and dress up or represent something big going on politically or in the news. This year they did a tribute to Micheal Jackson. They had one person dressed as Michael Jackson trying to pull off the moonwalk and some of his other famous moves and the rest of the men followed behind dancing as Thriller and other songs blared from the speakers - they did a great job of keeping it light and entertaining.

There were many other interesting floats and people involved in the parade, it was a great time and lasted about two hours. The kids love to collect all of the candy and trinkets that are given out. The parade concludes with numerous police cars and fire trucks with their sirens and lights on. It was a great way to start out the 4th of July holiday.

[+/-] click to show/hide this post