Month: January 2018

Tasty Tuesday–Schnitzel Platz

When we were in Chicago recently, we had the opportunity to go to dinner at Schnitzel Platz in Glendale Heights. For those of us anxiously awaiting the opening of the Hofbräuhaus downstate here in Belleville, an authentic German meal was very welcome!

The inside is just what you’d expect in a German restaurant, and I loved it! It also smelled like a German restaurant (so pretty much like beer, sauerkraut and pork), even before we walked in the front door!

The menu is amazing. One look at the extensive selection of schnitzels was all I needed to know that I would be able to find something fantastic!

I tried to photograph all of the German foods at our table, from the pre-dinner pretzels to the soup and salad selections, and of course the main courses! I personally enjoyed the liver dumpling soup, which is something I had never tried before and is way out of my comfort zone, but I shouldn’t have worried…it was delicious! I also had my favorite preparation of schnitzel…the Jäger Schnitzel, which has a nice mushroom sauce. In addition, I chose Spätzle (of course!), and sauerkraut to complete my meal. I had a Spatenbräu with my dinner, and some of the children enjoyed Sprecher root beer (they loved that it was served in a mini stein!). Also pictured are the German salad plate, which had beets, red cabbage, and cucumber and carrot salads, Wiener schnitzel with Spätzle and red cabbage, Panierte Schweine Koteletten (fried pork chops), with red cabbage and a dumpling, Goulash, and Käse Spätzle from the children’s menu.

We especially enjoyed the live accordion music that accompanied our meal:

There was also a lovely dessert selection…unfortunately, we were all too full from dinner to try anything, but it sure was nice to look at!

Our meal was amazing. Everything tasted just right, and the portions were quite generous. The only downside was how busy it was on a Saturday night. Even though we had a reservation, we had to wait to be seated, and we waited even longer for our food to be prepared. But between the live music and the great energy in the restaurant (various diners were singing and/or dancing most of the time we were there!), even that wasn’t too big of a deal, and I’d definitely go back if I had the chance…just maybe on a week night next time!

Updating with some pictures from our second visit to the Schnitzel Platz in May 2018, where I had the chance to celebrate my 1st 39th birthday a few weeks early. We tried some appetizers this time: Baked Camambert with raspberry sauce and potato pancakes. Turkey tried the cream of mushroom soup before his meal, and for dinner, he had the sauerbraten, while Ladybug had the bratwurst and I had Rahm Schnitzel. I even tried a dessert…hazelnut cake (with a birthday candle), enjoyed to the tune of “Happy Birthday” played on cowbells. The Amazing Mike also played flute, trumpets (two at once!), guitar, banjo, and bottles! It was a completely different, and completely fun experience!

2017-18 School Year–Week Eighteen+

I’m wrapping up two-ish weeks of school, and I’m late with it to boot! But when you see how busy we’ve been, I think you’ll see why!

The week of the 15th-19th was just INSANE! Moose had off school that Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and we always do some different things on that date, so while we had school, it wasn’t exactly our normal schedule. And then Moose’s school cancelled school Tuesday on account of cold (don’t even get me started…I enjoyed having him home, but I really think the schools in the St. Louis area have a different definition of cold than I do after having grown up in the Chicago suburbs!), so that wasn’t really a full day of school for us, because we wanted to hang out with him at least part of the day. We did have a normal day of school on Wednesday, but on Thursday, we hit the road dark and early to go to Chicago, where we did manage to cram a few educational activities/field trips (visits to the Adler Planetarium, the Chicago Botanic Garden, Legoland Discovery Center, and Wheaton College, to see the Perry Mastodon, which went perfectly with Ladybug’s science lessons from that week) into our weekend:

The last week wasn’t exactly standard, either. We had school on Monday, but we spent the day at the Missouri History Museum, where they were holding a “homeschool day” focusing on immigration to St. Louis. It was really interesting learning about some of the groups that settled in this area (particularly Bosnian and German immigrants), as well as what their journey might have been like, and what kind of cultural arts they brought to the area with them (we loved trying Bosnian “carpet” weaving and Scherenschnitte, which is German paper cutting). We even got to try our hand at a bit of translation!

After that, the week was more or less normal…except for the half-day we had on Friday, because Moose had another day off. Turkey, Bunny, and Ladybug all finished up chapters in their science texts. We finally got back to our literature studies of Heidi and Beowulf. Ladybug has been doing some simplified versions of the things Turkey and Bunny have been working on in geometry (volume, surface area, and drawing circles with a compass), while they have moved on to working with radicals. I never thought I’d say it, but I am so glad their curriculum for the last few years has been so demanding, because it made everything seem much easier this time through! And we tried to observe National Lutheran School Week as best we could, even though I have never really figured out how to incorporate it into our homeschool!

This week should (hopefully) be completely normal, and I’m hoping we get a lot accomplished to make up for some of the weirdness in our schedule since basically before Christmas!

Markel Family Winter Weekend Getaway–Day Four

Our last day of our winter weekend getaway was pretty low-key. We slept in as long as possible, and watched a little more Food Network before we had to pack up and leave the Clarion Inn.

I stopped at the local Jewel-Osco one more time before we left town…I love visiting local grocery store chains when we travel!

And then we hit the road. We weren’t quite ready to say goodbye to Chicago, though, so we stopped at Portillo’s in Normal, IL, on the way home. There’s nothing like Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef!

And that was the end of our little vacation. This is the third time we’ve visited Chicago when the Fab Five were really old enough to enjoy it, and we’re already looking forward to our next trip!

Markel Family Winter Weekend Getaway–Day Three

Did I mention why we were in Chicagoland in the first place? Ryan was working at/playing in the Frosty Faustings fighting game tournament. We couldn’t get free spectator passes like we have in the past at Combo Breaker, so we didn’t get to see much of the event, but we did peek in on Saturday morning:

We had more plans for Saturday, starting with a visit to Wheaton College’s campus to see the Perry mastodon and the Billy Graham Center Museum, which included a walk through “heaven:”

We also enjoyed a lunch featuring some of Chicago’s best foods at Flip’s in Glen Ellyn:

It occurred to me last year that I had been remiss in not taking the Fab Five to the Popcorn Store in downtown Wheaton, so we visited what is probably Chicagoland’s narrowest store, and picked out about $10 worth of candy to share:

Then we went back to the hotel for a little more cable TV, and a nice picture of the Fab Five:

We went to church at St. John Wheaton for the third time, but this was the first time we were there in the evening:

After church, we enjoyed a German dinner at Schnitzel Platz:

Once we were back at the hotel, we stayed awake watching Worst Cooks in America for as long as we could since it was our last night in the hotel!

Markel Family Winter Weekend Getaway–Day Two

We were up pretty early again on day two of our winter weekend getaway because we had somewhere very important to be…the Legoland Discovery Center in Schaumburg! Turkey has always dreamed of visiting Legoland, and while this wasn’t the full amusement park, it was as close as he has been, and he (and the rest of us) was very excited to see it! Lego never disappoints us, and we had a great time!!!

After a stop at the very big and busy Woodfield Mall across the street, we headed east to the Chicago Botanic Garden, to take advantage of the reciprocity we have with our Missouri Botanical Garden membership. The weather was kind of amazing for Chicago in January, and we all enjoyed our visit to the very beautiful garden!

Since we were already pretty far east, and I can never see enough of Lake Michigan, we drove through Ferris Bueller’s neighborhood, and stopped at Glencoe Beach, where we enjoyed the playground, a nice walk down to the beach itself, and the unusually gorgeous weather!

That was a lot of driving around for one day (and included me getting on the 290, which I have spent the last 20+ years trying not to do!), so we headed back to what was a very nice room at our hotel (the Clarion Inn), where we turned the Food Network back on, and just chilled out for the rest of the evening!

Markel Family Winter Weekend Getaway–Day One

Time to recap another fun Markel Family weekend getaway…this time, the somewhat unusual winter edition!

Last Thursday, we left for our trip to Chicago at 4 a.m. Now, as far as I’m concerned, there is only one four o’clock every day. But we had places to be, and I also knew that if we got to our first stop on our trip, the Adler Planetarium, before 9:30 in the morning, we would pay the early bird parking rate. Despite traffic on 55, we made it just in time, and this trip will be forever know as “that time mom wanted to save nine dollars on parking!”

Once we parked in the planetarium lot, I needed to have a moment with Lake Michigan and the city skyline. A nice, cold moment…there’s nothing like a lake breeze in January! But it was also a beautiful moment:

We then spent the next several hours touring Adler. It really was my lucky day, because in addition to the reciprocity that our membership with the St. Louis Science Center gives us, it was Illinois resident day, which meant that every one of us received free admission to the museum!

After we saw all we could see in the planetarium, I needed a few more minutes to walk around and take in the sights:

We then traveled west to our hotel in Elmhurst, where we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening watching the Food Network on cable TV, which is one of our family’s vacation guilty pleasures!

Ten Years of Blogging

Today is my blog’s 10th “birthday.”

10 years ago, Ryan suggested I start blogging. I figured I’d give it a try, but I didn’t write very much at first. I didn’t really think I had anything to say, and I sure didn’t know who would want to read what I wrote!

But 2008 was a very big year for us. We decided to homeschool that year, and then Moose was diagnosed with autism, and he started his own school journey. And I wrote about those things. I still don’t know if I was just trying to sort out my own thoughts and feelings, or if I was hoping to connect with people having similar experiences, or if I thought maybe what I was doing and going through could help other people somehow. But I started writing more and more frequently, and in 2011, I had my first full year of daily blogging, and I never looked back. I have now blogged every day, at least once a day, and sometimes more frequently, for over seven years straight.

There have been times when I have really felt like a successful blogger. Many months, my website has had over 3,000 views, and while I know that doesn’t mean people are really reading what I have to say, it’s still a lot to me. I’ve come to recognize seasonal ebbs and flows of certain posts. I’ve had days where my blog traffic has really spiked. Several things I have written have been viewed thousands of times. I was even recognized in public once as a local homeschool blogger, and I won’t lie…I felt like a celebrity!

There have been other times, though, when I have wondered why I bother. When I can see that people just aren’t reading what I’m writing. Where I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into a post that I think is really interesting and it has fallen flat. When I can’t think of what I want to write about, or can’t find the words for what I do want to say. When we’re busy or there’s illness in the house, and it seems like I just can’t find the time for anything. And of course, worst of all, the moments when I see other bloggers who are somehow able to make money, or even just get gifts of things they like from various companies, and I wonder, what am I doing wrong that no one has even reached out to me like that?

I keep at it, though. Because in the end, it doesn’t really matter to me who is reading what I’m writing, and I’m sure not in this to get some kind of compensation. What matters is that I found my voice, that I know I have something to say, and that I’m putting myself out there, every day, sharing my thoughts and experiences, and making a tiny little corner of the internet mine.

If you’ve ever considered starting a blog, or picking up a long-abandoned blog, I challenge you to give it a shot. There is so much benefit to putting your thoughts down on “paper” and expressing yourself, and even one voice can make a difference!