Stopping to Play in Illinois

We set out from our friends in Iowa and headed north east.  Our destination was the suburbs of Chicago. Scott and I visited Chicago last year for our anniversary and while I loved the city and would love to visit it again, we didn’t feel this was the trip to take the family into the city.  Instead we planned a stop at Lego Discovery Center outside of the city. 

The kids enjoyed it.  There was a few little ride.  They enjoyed the one where they got to shoot laser guns the most. We watched 2 different 4D lego themed movies.  I was impressed with the Lego displays.   My 7 year old enjoyed pretending to pick their noses.  The kids and Scott also really enjoyed just sitting and playing with Legos.  They each designed their own cars and raced them down the track. 

Afterwards we drove about 20 minutes to a beautiful area of the Chicago suburbs to visit an ADORABLE train themed restaurant that my friend had told me about.  I knew my train loving three year old would love it and HE DID!  The restaurant was located right beside a train stop.  The highlight of our vacation for my three year old has been spotting the choo-choo trains as we have passed them all around the country.  And we have seen some pretty big choo choo trains go by.  Whenever they do he very enthusiastically sings out, “Chug a chug a chug a chug a… CHOO CHOO!” with an emphatic fist pump at the end.  So, when we saw a train up close and the engineer blew his whistle for us, that was pretty exciting. 

Then we went inside to a complete train themed restaurant in which a model train brings you  your dinner on its railroad car.  How cool is that?  The waitresses were super friendly and very easy going about the “chug a chugging” my three year old did when the train passed by his place.  While eating we got to watch several more large trains go by our window.

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To top it off, the food was delicious!  It was a super fun family evening.