We don’t normally attend the Saturday vigil, but we did this weekend. This left our Sunday, the Feast of the Holy Family, open to celebrate by going somewhere fun.

First, we headed to Union Station and bought a family pass for Science City. We have to go two more times to make it worth the cost, but it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a great place for the kids to work off excess energy on cold winter days. Billy particularly enjoyed the area that looked like a city sewer system and the black sewer tunnel you could crawl through. I think he went through the tunnel 20 or 30 times. Jenny tried four times to go, but, even with siblings, was too scared. I don’t think we saw a third of the things in Science City. We’ll go back.

Next, we used The Link, an elevated glass walkway (too cool), to get to the Crown Center. It has a shopping area, which we didn’t care about, but it also had several seasonal displays including a gingerbread village with a train. The kids loved that. Outside there was a large Christmas tree, a display that kids could climb on (like this train), and a skating terrace. We did not go skating, and the kids were highly disappointed.

We finished our day by eating at Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant. How could we not? We ate at the one at the Crown Center, but this link shows the original one, not too far away. You order by using the phone at your table, and your meal is delivered by an overhead train. It was cute. It was fun. The food was greasy, but I happen to like greasy food, and it’s fine in moderation (like once a year).

There was a family with seven kids (gasp!) at the restaurant. I resisted the impulse to ask if they were all theirs. And then we saw another family with about 5 kids. I asked Bill if it was Big Family Field Trip Day or what. Maybe they all had the same idea we did: honor the Holy Family by making our own family memories. It was, all in all, a good day.