Come see what we’ve been doing at Our Place…

For our weekly lunch, we went to J.P. McCarthy's in Winnetka, where we got our own special room. We used the privacy to talk about our favorite things about Our Place in the summer. Of course, everyone had great things to say, such as going to the beach, going out to lunch, using the van, and just hanging out with our friends!

We have been working on creating “About Me” Jeopardy for all of the Our Place participants. We all answered questions about ourselves and we formed a game about it. We finally played our first round this week, which was all about Josh, and we learned a lot of cool facts about him! Some highlights were that his favorite food is bagels with cream cheese and his favorite musical group is Steely Dan. Everybody seemed to really like it and we’re excited to find out more about each other as we more rounds about different people.

The beach as always was a hit. John L. and Katie and Abbey enjoyed the water while Josh Nate and Rebecca played frisbee. Laura, Frank and Matt decided to relax in the Sun...Something for Everyone.

We also went to the Winnetka sidewalk sale on Friday. It was really hot outside so it was a fairly short trip, but we all liked it a lot. Katie bought so much stuff that she couldn’t even carry it all, but we all helped out. Derek only bought things related to the Cubs, and Josh spent his time collecting brochures from different businesses in Winnetka. At the end we all got snow cones, which were very good.

That’s what has been happening at Our Place!

Jam Packed Week!

Even though it was a short week because there wasn’t any camp on Monday, we’ve had a very busy week at Our Place. Check out everything that we did!

We had poetry with Barry, which we do every Tuesday afternoon. This past Tuesday, we wrote stories for the first time, which was very exciting. We wrote about what we did on the 4th of July and about what the 4th of July means to us. Then we all shared our stories with each other so we learned what everybody did during the long weekend.

For our lunch outing this week, we went to Little Red Hen, a family-owned restaurant in Glencoe. They had a ton of choices and everybody seemed to really like it. Frank even mentioned that he wanted to go back there with his family. Joey got dessert and he liked it so much that a few more people decided that they had to get some as well, and they were very happy that they did. There were so many of us that we took over a large part of the restaurant and we had a great time!

We also went to Gilson beach, which we hadn’t been to in awhile because we have been trying other beaches in the New Trier Township. We ran into Keenan right when we got there, so we sat next to him and spent some time with him at the beach. Even though it was very hot outside, the water was freezing, which none of us expected. Travis seemed to be unaffected by the cold and was the first one to get himself completely wet. Soon a few more of us joined and many people spent the whole time at the beach playing catch in the water. A few people got snacks at the concession stand, and a seagull tried to eat our nachos! Katie and Frank thought it was hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing.

On Friday, we went to Millenium Park, which was the farthest that we have ever gone in the Our Place Mobile. It was a pretty long car ride, so we played Eye Spy on the way there. At first it was a little difficult, but we got the hang of it and played it all the way until we got to the park. We had a picnic and played cards in the park, and then we played Sharks and Minnows, which was Katie’s suggestion. Of course, we took a picture of us at the bean, and at the end we took off our shoes and played in the fountain for a little while.

We played 20 Questions on the way home, which was Emily’s idea. She started, and it took us almost the whole car ride to figure out that she was thinking of light bulbs. It was a little frustrating but we finally figured it out. Overall, it was a very successful outing!

We seemed to fit a lot into our shortened week at Our Place!

Fun in the Sun!

Here’s everything that’s been going on at Our Place since we last posted!

We have gone on a lot of great field trips. We went to Hidden Creek water park in Highland Park, which was a big success! It was a small group, but everyone had a lot of fun. Josh went down every slide and even did a cannonball off the diving board. John wasn’t in the mood for slides, but he really enjoyed spinning around in circles and Katie loved the concession stand. We decided that it would be fun to try to go again with a bigger group later in the summer since we all had such a great time.

We also went to the Bahai temple. We walked all around the gardens and we especially liked the fountains. We went inside the temple and quietly looked at all of the pretty designs in the building. Josh had the great idea to check out the visitor’s center downstairs, and luckily we decided to take his suggestion. We got to read a lot about the history of the Bahai religion and we even saw a movie that showed all of the Bahai temples around the world. As we left, each of us threw a penny into a fountain and made a wish, but Frank decided that he would rather wait and save his wish for his next birthday!

We have been continuing our search for the best ice cream in the New Trier Township. We went to Hardigan’s in Evanston which got excellent reviews from everyone in the van on the way home. We walked to Bobtail which was only a couple of blocks from Our Place and although some were worried that it was too far away, everyone was happy once they got their ice cream.

Another one of our trips was to the Winnetka Public Library, where we read a lot of interesting science magazines. Josh read an article out loud about Pluto, where we learned that Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Instead, it is called a dwarf planet! We also discovered that there are new space suits that can be used to jump through space and land all the way on earth, which is pretty cool.

Every single day at Our Place is jam packed, but those are some highlights of the exciting things that we’ve been up to!