Springfield Family Vacey

What a lovely Columbus Day weekend!  Kyle and I took the kids on a 3 night trip to Springfield, IL.  The kids really enjoyed our stay at the Crown Plaza hotel.  It was wonderful having uninterrupted family time.  We visited New Salem, the settlement were Abe Lincoln lived for a few years upon arriving in Springfield off of the flatboat.  We toured the Old Capital, which was absolutely incredible.  On Sunday we spent several hours at the Lincoln Presidential Museum.  The museum is just phenomenal.  We also returned to New Salem Sunday night for a candle light walk complete with apple cider and gingerbread.  Before we left on Monday we stopped at a huge sporting goods store.  We were there forever...I had to drag Kyle out of there.  He was in his happy place.  It was such a big store, there was a full sized Farris wheel inside.   

 

Here are a few pictures from New Salem.  The weather could not have been any more beautiful.  I think I might have said, "This weather is absolutely perfect" a million times over the weekend.  I just couldn't help myself, the phrase just kept coming out of my mouth. 

 

Evangeline and I were totally impressed with this massive wool carder.  It took oxen walking on this treadmill thing (pictured) to move the carder, which is located on the inside of the cabin.  

 

As I mentioned, the Old Capital was so neat.  There is so much history here.  It's amazing how much of it has been preserved.  Here we saw Lincoln's original campaign posters, a flag carried in the Civil War, the furniture that was in the train car that carried Lincoln's body from D.C. to IL., the room where Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech, which was also the same room where Lincoln lay in state.  75,000 people came through this room to pay their respects to him before his burial. It was just an amazing place.  

 

I could just tell that Jed was really taking in all the history.  

 

Jed just loves practicing his walking skills.  He spends more time walking than crawling right now.  He's still not 100% committed, but he's getting close. 

 

This precious little guy enjoyed getting held while napping and sleeping in bed with us for the weekend.

 

The Lincoln museum gets me every time.  I seem to always leave with tears.   

We walked from the museum to Lincoln's home.  Jed was a bit of a handful, but we managed to make it through. 

 

There's Mr. Lincoln's house in the background....

The candle lite walk in New Salem was lots of fun, other than the fact that there were tons of people there.  We were shocked.  The gingerbread and apple cider was a nice touch.