The Tank Museum

In the summer, at a moment's notice, I like to just say, "Oh, we're going to do this today". Whatever 'this' may be. I decided I wanted to take my kids to Cantigny http://www.cantigny.org/ and was lucky enough that our local library is in Cahoots with Macy's and you can get various museum passes for free, so aside from the gas it took to drive there and the lunch I packed, this was a fun, free day trip.

Cantigny is the home of Robert McCormick, the guy who founded the "Chicago Tribune" and subsequent Tribune Companies. He was pretty much loaded. He also fought in the First Division in WWI, so there are 2 museums on his property, the 'War Museum" and the "House Museum". I'd have loved a house tour, but the kids were not going to traipse through a one hundred year old house without breaking something. I'm pretty certain of that.

Cantigny also has a lot of gardens. They are beautiful if you have the time to appreciate them, which my children do not, and they couldn't care less that this is how Illinois used to look, before Urban sprawl took over. This is the prairie grass garden. If you look closely you can see the heads of some wee ones...

So this McCormick dude is buried on his property in a tomb called Exedra. It's pretty sweet. The dog statue is remniscent of his pets, becasue I guess he liked them enough to turn them into marble statues. It's amazing what people with money will spend it on, because all I kept thinking about was "Dozer" and "The Keymaster" and Rick Moranis when I saw the Dog Statues. If you have to ask why and what that references then I feel sorry for you.
Seriously kid?

This is walking through another garden. Apparently she got an 'owie' and we had a crisis of epic proportions on our hands. The only thing that could have saved the day was a Dora bandaid and I was fresh out.

Jack really enjoyed the tanks and swinging from the guns. He was actually disappointed that they could only climb on like, 10 tanks that day because several others were being refurbished for the 60th anniversary party. Or something along those lines.

This is trouble in a nutshell.

This is Maddie on top of the tank that she climbed onto all by herself. She is showing you her muscles and making her "muscles" face. Look how strong she is.

I suppose this is the best I can hope for in any phot with me and the kids.

The First Division Museum is cool, but it freaked the kids out. First you walk through the Trenches in France from WWI, complete with 'going underground', and guys on hills shooting at you. Then you get on a boat during WWII heading for Omaha Beach, and you watch a movie that shows reall footage of the invasion. Then you go through a Jungle and can watch what Vietnam was like and lastly there's a display about Desert Storm.

There were several tours going on the day we went, and the tour guide was telling a group of 12 year olds about how Desert Storm was the 100 hour war, etc. I heard one kid whisper to another, "Yah, Dude, I like, have totally heard about this one before!"

Totally heard about it? Buddy I lived it! And now I know how the guy in the jungle 30 yards back must have felt with all these kids coming through. He looked the part of the vet, what with his longish beard, and jacket with American Flags and POW patches sewn on, AND he was correcting the movie (Did you know the TET offensive is pronounced "TAIT". I didn't.) You can always learn something new. Always. Like, how old exactly you really are.....