Braidwood

I spent many summer days and nights at the Braidwood Recreation Club, which is a series of lakes created by surface mining of coal many, many years ago.  The holes all filled in with water, and they are open for fishing, motor-less boating, and one beach for swimming.  (When the girls saw the beach area, they said, "Why do they have a pretend beach here?" and then later in the week, "Can we go back to that little pretend beach and go swimming?" They are a little spoiled by the Gulf....) When I was little we canoed, camped, picnicked, and swam with my dad's extended family and loved pretty much every minute, and I wanted to give the girls a little taste of that. 

The girls weren't quite as enamored with canoeing as GPa and I were, but they did brighten up when we saw turtles, which were sunning themselves on just about every sunken log in the lake.  We also saw a water snake and a red-winged blackbird nest in the reeds.

We ran out to The Polka Dot for an old-school diner experience.  Burgers were good, shakes delicious.  Then we re-introduced the girls to Marilyn, The King, and Betty Boop for good measure :) 

Finally we made it back to the Rec Club for some playground fun.  This caterpillar was there when I was little and is in remarkably good shape for being that old! The girls loved it as much as I did when I was little.

And in milestone news, the girls each made their first solo trip across the monkey bars!