the town just a few miles north of them had a huge lake and the town itself had a little area that once had a building on it but the building burned down leaving the lot emptied. The town made it into a little park and had put a caboose on one end of it so the children could play in it as well except for the Christmas holiday season and then the city used it for Santa to use to take pictures with the children. Maxine took the girls there to play with old luggage as if they were going on a trip on a train. the girls enjoyed it tremendously . Maxine knew it was building memories.
Maxine talked to Isabel's parents about taking the girls on a real train trip to the countryside to an Amish town for a day or two. There they had homemade ice cream which they had made and got a new quilt for each of their beds. The girls loved the horse drawn carriages. Maxine bought two different carriages and ordered them to be delivered to the house. One was an open carriage that a lot of Amish families use. It was parked at the side of an out building that she had built that resembled a bakery / ice cream shop.
She even got a little ice cream machine so the girls could make their own ice cream. Maxine had the housekeeper bake three or four little pies and little loaves of homemade bread for them to sell to neighbors when the girls played bakery owners. The elderly women that lived across the road enjoyed buying the girl's bakery goods with monopoly money.
The other carriage was a stage coach. It was placed by the sheriff's office and bank. The girls loved to play cowboys and Indians plus bank robbers and the sheriff just not as much as some of the other things. One building was a hotel. Another one was designed as an old country store. A member of the town's board of aldermen happened to drive by Kelsey's home coming for the nearest town to the west and saw the buildings and other display and drove into the driveway to check things out.
Maxine talked to the alderman and suggested to him that they used their land for a week long event that he called Round Up Days. The church provided volunteers for the show. A ranch down the roads away provided several horses and cow hands . It went off like a bang. Even the elderly ladies who could help did and the ones that couldn't lend a hand labor wise did their part as bank customers and café customers. Both Kelsey and Isabel thoroughly loved playing all of the owners of different businesses.