CHATEAU MABILE

In mid-November, Greg's Dad came for an extended weekend visit. Liam and Ginny loved having him there and became better acquainted with "The Claw." One of our first stops was 2Toots.

Wow. Are these two related? Hahaha! I swear they are!

Now, by some happy accident, we managed to move to a major railroading town. It was originally just a grist mill and a railroad station, but turned into a little town in the 1850s. Okay, well ORIGINALLY originally it was the home of several Chippewa tribes. Ah, anyway, let's get back on track....hahahahaha... I knew that this was a railroad town because there are trains everywhere all of the time. Constantly. You WILL get caught by a train so plan accordingly...I learned that early on. What I didn't know though, was that it is also home to a fairly unique train location called the Deval Crossing. Basically, it is a junction of three different railroading lines which forms a really cool triangle pattern with tracks. It is very nearly walking distance from our house so we knew we had to take Liam to see it. (Want to know more? Check out this link: http://www.dhke.com/CRJ/deval.html )
 

 

He was probably thinking that someone must've had fun designing this track layout. Switches and crossings are his absolute favorites.
 

Telling us all about what he could see.
 

You can see the old signal tower behind that cute little tiger we found wandering along the tracks.
 

Liam and Paw under the signals.
 

3 generations of Mabile men. Pretty cool picture I think. I'd love to take one later when Liam is the tallest :p
 

Don't forget about the Mabile girls!
 

An all around fun and interesting little outing! We had no idea the tracks by our house were part of such a unique railroading location.

Now another fun part of Paw's visit....date night! He put the kids to bed while Greg and I went out. We decided to check another place off of the Chicago Burger Bible (yeah, we both have a major hamburger obsession). Now, we've only gotten to do 2 so far but they were both in the top 8 on the list and OH. MY. CHEESEBURGER. Unbelievable. Ridiculously good. This one in particular was at a place called Mindy's Hot Chocolate. We got it with the fried egg on top and I swear I caught a glimpse of heaven. And of course I had some hot chocolate!