Pumpkin farm!

On Saturday Frank and I took the little kids to a pumpkin patch near my parents' house while my mom and dad were out of town.

Livin' the life, those two. ;)

Frank and I went into a bit of sticker shock when we got there. Is it just me, or have pumpkin patches gotten a lot more gimmicky than they used to be? I couldn't believe the prices just to get in, and then all the hidden costs inside. There were only about three activities the kids could do without us paying extra.

Let me get all old-lady for a second and say, "It just wasn't like that back in my day!" Or maybe it was, and I just didn't notice it?

Anyway, the kids were happy to be there. And the weather was great.

Plus, pumpkins are always a good time.

We went on a hay ride through the corn fields...

And braved the corn maze.

I was impressed with the cute illustrated signs (telling the story of Spookley the pumpkin) and proud of how quickly I was getting through the maze.

Then we came out and realized that was the kids' maze.

The real, adult, difficult maze was on the other side of the farm.

How embarrassing.

We all liked the petting zoo (featuring goats, sheep, chickens, etc.) and we really liked seeing the llamas, although we did not pet them.

Those guys are not the friendliest.

Of course I channeled my inner Yzma and declared, "A llama?! He's supposed to be dead!"

To me, all llamas are Kuzco.

After that we had a run-in with our favorite Blues Brothers!

We sure do love that movie.

We bought "honey straws" and apple cider donuts for Sunday's breakfast before we left.

Then we went home and ate cupcakes.

It was a good day.

A pilgrimage on Saturday

Saturday morning, Frank and I set off on a pilgrimage. A real-life, honest-to-goodness, bona fide pilgrimage.

Maybe you're thinking, "A what now? You mean like from Canterbury Tales? That sounds awfully ... Middle Ages."

Maybe you're thinking, "Oh yeah, a pilgrimage. Always a good time. I went on one myself, last month."

Either way, yes.

Here's the back story: Frank took the bar exam at the end of July, but he doesn't get his exam results until mid-October. He's anxious about them, as you can imagine, so he decided to make a pilgrimage (a time of intense prayer) after the exam to pray for his results. He invited me to join him and I was all for it. Conveniently we were able to time it to coincide with the day of prayer and fasting for Syria that Pope Francis called for on Saturday.

I've been on several pilgrimages before, most notably to Rome my sophomore year of college and to the Holy Land my senior year—both incredible experiences. But Frank had never been on a pilgrimage, and as it had been a while for me I didn't quite feel qualified to direct the expedition. We needed to do some research.

For some reason I had a really hard time finding anything online about how to make a pilgrimage. Do you know of any good resources out there? I really couldn't find anything. There needs to be a "how to make a Catholic pilgrimage" website out there, but right now there isn't. Finally I gave up and just asked my mom and her friends. Which worked out perfectly as we learned a lot from them.

I learned that a pilgrimage, as a journey to a holy site, is a microcosm of our life on this earth. The holy place symbolizes Heaven, while our journey—at times difficult yet imbued overall with a sacred, solemn joy—represents our life on Earth as Christians.

I learned that people have been making pilgrimages since long before the Middle Ages and Canterbury Tales. It's among the most ancient of human traditions—in fact Jesus, Mary and Joseph themselves went on pilgrimages (remember when they went to Jerusalem and Jesus got lost in the temple for three days? That was a pilgrimage.).  I can't tell you how powerful, how beautiful, it is to participate in a custom so ancient and still rich with meaning.

I learned that you can pick any holy site you like for a pilgrimage. One woman told me that she makes pilgrimages to the grave of her little daughter who died in infancy. The little one is now a saint in Heaven, so her burial place is a perfect site for pilgrimage.

I learned that pilgrims typically pray aloud and sing hymns on their way to the holy place. For a short trip like we were planning, just one day, my mom recommended praying five decades of the Rosary on the way there, five more at the pilgrimage site, and five on the way back. She recommended praying the mysteries of the day at the site, the mysteries of the day before on the way there, and the next day's mysteries on the way home. (Since we went on a Saturday, that meant Sorrowful on the way there, Joyful at the site, and Glorious on the way home.) That worked out perfectly for us.

Armed with all of this knowledge, our next step was to pick a pilgrimage site.

There are plenty of spectacular holy sites near Chicago, from the National Shrine of St. Therese near my parents to Holy Hill in Wisconsin (where my dad takes my little siblings for annual father-daughter and father-son pilgrimages), and a little farther out there's even the incredible site in Wisconsin where Our Lady appeared to a young farm girl. We finally settled on the Marytown shrine in Libertyville, since neither of us had been there before and we'd heard great things about it.

We made it to Marytown just in time for Mass at noon. The church is modeled after St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, which just happens to be Frank's and my favorite basilica (sorry, St. Peter's). Such a neat coincidence.

We had a great time exploring the grounds—we were delighted to find a "Rosary walk" with little gardens designed around each set of mysteries.

Even more interesting than the gardens were the museums inside. The shrine has a museum for St. Maximilian Kolbe (it's really hard to find—you have to ask at the front desk and be escorted down the elevator), and on Saturday they also had a special exhibit about the Shroud of Turin.

On our way down to the Maximilian Kolbe museum, we were delighted to discover a sweet little exhibit of ... nun dolls. It was so random, but so adorable. Every major religious order was represented with a cute little doll dressed in the appropriate habit. I've never seen anything quite like it.

I kept thinking this would be a great place to bring a little girl who was learning about the different religious orders. I also kind of wanted to hug all the dolls ... and maybe even bring one home. They really were absolutely darling.

We looked extra-hard for the religious orders that my friends belong to. We found the Nashville Dominicans easily enough, where my friend Sister Angela Marie belongs, and then we looked for the Franciscan nuns, where my friend Marilis belongs (I can't remember her religious name—the perils of knowing someone well before she becomes a nun).  Finally we looked for the Carmelites, like my friend Sarah (I also can't remember her religious name), but there were several different kinds of Carmelites and we didn't know which one was right so finally we gave up.

The Maximilian Kolbe museum was really something. Its official name is the Holocaust Museum, and that's fitting since the museum was only partly about Kolbe and mostly about the Holocaust as a whole. I kept thinking what a great place it would be to bring kids who are learning about the Holocaust in school (or doing a homeschool unit on it). It reminded Frank and I of the amazing Holocaust Museum in downtown DC.

One especially great item: this painting of Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man for whom Kolbe gave his life. According to his biography, Franciszek lived to a ripe old age and spent the rest of his life spreading the word about Kolbe's courageous sacrifice. Franciszek lobbied hard for Kolbe's sainthood and was honored with being present at Kolbe's canonization.

It was an incredible visit. After we got home and our pilgrimage was over, I asked Frank how he liked his first pilgrimage. He said he loved it, so I think the day was a success.

So, that was our little pilgrimage experience. If you've been a pilgrim yourself, do you have a favorite site to visit? How would you explain a pilgrimage to someone who's never made one? And if you've never heard of such a thing before, do you have any questions about it? :)

Time travel and good conversations

I've told you guys before how much I love Naper Settlement. Following up on what I said in the earlier post about volunteering there again, I had my first training session yesterday in the 1800s schoolhouse. Sadly I didn't get to volunteer in costume—instead I observed a professional re-enactor, who gave me ideas and advice for showing visitors around and "teaching" the junior volunteers.

On my way up to the schoolhouse, I was glad to see the fort is looking good. Last time I was here, it was blocked off for repairs. Apparently the faux cannonballs from the annual Civil War battle did some damage to the outside? Who would've thought.

I looked nostalgically at the Murray House, the first house I ever worked in. Supposedly Stephen Douglas slept here once on a visit to town—always a fun fact to tell visitors. This house didn't used to get a lot of visitors when I worked there, so most days I would bring my knitting, a book, or my rosary and pass the hours in quiet peace. It was so pleasant, working or praying alone in the stillness. I miss those times. (Lillian, do you feel the same way?)

But yesterday, most of my day was spent in the schoolhouse. As much as I love all the Settlement buildings, from the log cabin to the blacksmith shop, the Schoolhouse will always be my favorite.

I was fortunate yesterday to be paired with a great re-enactor to learn from. He is a sweet older gentleman named Ernie, who enjoyed a successful career in business before retiring to re-enact full-time. He considers himself a professional historian, and his love for educating young people about the past is remarkable.

My mom and I spent the afternoon in the Schoolhouse, talking to Ernie and watching him give tours and "teach" the junior volunteers.

Ernie with his class

(Apologies for such a blurry photo—I blurred it on purpose to make the people unidentifiable, since I didn't ask their permission to post it here.)

I learned so much yesterday from our conversations with Ernie. The man has a true passion for history and his excitement about it was contagious.

"Do you keep a journal?" he asked me at one point. "Sort of," I said, thinking of this blog.

"You should," he said. "You never know how useful it could be. Maybe someday a future historian will be looking for artifacts from our era, and your journal will be the only thing he can find."

"Very early in my business career, a businessman I greatly respected told me to keep a journal," Ernie went on. "He told me that a life worth living is a life worth recording."

I stopped and asked him to repeat that—I was so blown away. Here it is again, for you:

A life worth living is a life worth recording. 

What a line. I couldn't stop thinking about those words. Isn't there so much truth in that line—so much for us bloggers, recorders of the little things, to unpack? I resolved to make that my blog's motto.

Although he is a professional re-enactor, Ernie made a lot of light-hearted jokes about the job. "Re-enactors are really just imaginative kids who loved pretending they lived in a different era," he said, "and they don't want to stop even though they're grown up." I had to agree with him, although I like to think of re-enacting as a form of time travel. Few things give me a better perspective on my own life than spending a few hours immersing myself in a different time period.

He also talked about the strict rules that were enforced for children in the 1800s. This list of rules on the blackboard always causes a lot of amusement amongst the families who come to visit:

Those rules seem uncommonly strict, don't they? I mean, how many ways do they need to tell kids to be quiet, for cryin' out loud? I'll admit I used to think that people were just a lot harder on kids back in the day. But Ernie put it all in perspective and changed my mind.

"What does Rule 10 mean?" he would ask everyone who came in. Most people said, "Kids should be quiet," or "Kids should do what they're told."

"No," Ernie would say, "That's Rule 7, or Rule 1. Rule 10 means, 'Children must not interrupt the work of adults, either by their words or their actions.'"

Then he went on to explain, "The kids who came to this school were farm children, and farming is one of the most dangerous occupations—then and now. On top of that, people in those days weren't working for their next vacation—they were working for survival. These rules, and especially Rule 10, were a necessary measure to ensure the survival of the whole family."

I couldn't stop thinking about that either. What a difference these rules make when seen in the context of a community that was working, above all, for survival.

So as you can see, it was a very interesting and enriching afternoon. Of course, my favorite part was getting to hang out with this cute little pioneer lady:

I can't tell you what a joy it is having little siblings who are so much younger than me. I feel like I get to relive my childhood through them. Angela in particular likes to brag to everyone that she is my "mini-Theresa," and she glows with pride whenever someone says she looks like Lillian or me. Once she even asked me, "Theresa, do you think it's possible for triplets to be born 14 years apart?" I had to gently break the news to her that, no, she isn't technically our triplet. But I told her we could pretend she is all the same.

I had many more adventures this weekend, including a most unusual day trip on Saturday, and my first outdoor concert this summer (hurray for not being a stuffy old married woman!). ;) I will be posting about all of those things soon.

Thank you for reading, and I hope your week is off to a great start!

A visit to the world's greatest zoo

My extended family is one big bunch of zoo lovers. My grandma likes to say that whatever city we visit, the first place we go is the zoo. And while Brookfield Zoo might not officially be the world's best zoo, we all think we've never seen one finer.

I've been going to the Brookfield Zoo since I was a little girl, so it was a real treat to take Frank there for the first time.

Angela and Joseph with their favorite person in the whole wide world

 We saw lions and tigers (but no bears) ...

Penguins, parrots, and the world's cutest (and deadliest) little tree frogs.

Of course, the kids got excited when they found a chance to pretend to be animals themselves. (And yes I'm including Frank in "the kids.")

Frank and Joseph even held Angela upside-down so we could get a truly authentic bat picture.

Cutest bat I ever saw.

I hadn't been to Brookfield Zoo in a few years, but I was even more impressed with it coming back as an adult. Frank thought it was funny that the zoo is mostly indoors (on an extensive campus filled with beautifully designed buildings), but we realized that just makes sense in Chicago. You don't want to leave the gorillas hanging outdoors in a Chicago winter!

Brookfield Zoo is open 365 days a year, and as I recall they have some spectacular winter events for the annual "Holiday Magic" festival—including singing Christmas carols to the polar bears, who obviously just adore it. ;)

This is one place I'd recommend to friends of any age. Everyone in our family just loves it. Let me know if you get a chance to check it out some time!