Presidential Holiday

We celebrated our nation's former presidents by going to our state's capitol, Springfield. Also home to our favorite president's tomb, home, and lotsa memorabilia...and we may or may not be related to him...LOL!! Isn't everyone somehow related to either Abraham Lincoln or Joseph Smith through some distant blood/marriage line?!? :)

Anyway, we grabbed a great hotel deal off of Priceline and headed south on Friday night.



(The top floor of our hotel, that's the teeny tiny capitol building to the top left of Avery's head. :) I wouldn't go that far on the terrace...no thank you!)

First order of business was getting some grub...the only constraint was "nothing we can normally get back home" (which mainly consists of fast-food, pizza, and Chinese). So we found a "middle-eastern" place downtown called the Holy Land Cafe. We were hoping to get a little hummus and pita action, maybe a little shawarma and fattoush...you know the deal-e-o. When we got inside I knew that it wasn't exactly what we were hoping for...but we got sucked in. Ugh!! What is it about feeling bad about offending these establishments? The people-pleaser in me decided to stay and just experiment. Lucky us, it turned out to be an all you can eat Vegetarian buffet (or boofay as Dennis would say!) What?!? They took pity on us and brought a plate of gyro meat for all of us to share. Not the best food I've ever eaten, but also not garbage either. It's the kind of thing that we'll always remember and laugh...'member when we ate at that little Mediterranean place that was all you can eat Vegetarian?!? Ha ha!



After our Vegetarian meal, we went back to the hotel to swim...girls had a great time. It was a bit crowded but we're probably overly sensitive to large crowds after our years of exile in the country. :) Parker was a little fish, and probably drank gallons of pool water in her open-mouth, shrieking, splashing fun. What a little stinker. We tried putting her in the hotel "crib" and she was up till after midnight yelling at Mark to "stop snoring, Dad, go seep!!" LOL!!

Saturday we had breakfast at the slowest IHOP of all time, and then hit the State's museum. It was great! We kept ourselves busy for hours. Who woulda thunk? The hands-on portion was one of the best in the area. I kept myself busy doing this:


(feng-shuing a dollhouse in the kids hands-on museum, don't judge me! Ha ha!)

while the girls did this:



and this:



and this:



After that, we walked around the Capitol building, held Lincoln's hand, visited his tomb, drove by his house, and enjoyed what Springfield had to offer.





It was a quick, fun little getaway that made some good memories for all of us.