River Trade Brewing Company
We’re about a week away from the kids’ next competition and that means they want to be at the rink as much as they can.
The only day either of them take off is Saturday because there is no ice available in Kalamazoo on Saturday.
L’s practice time started fairly early (at least for us) on Sunday morning and that was going to make it hard for us to meat J’s parents for Mother’s Day breakfast/brunch. I suggested instead of Sunday morning we meat Saturday evening for dinner. J and her mom both thought that was a a good idea so that’s what we planned.
I told then to pick where they wanted to go and they both told me to pick where they wanted to go. I was put on the spot when we were having the conversation and there wasn’t really anything that came to mind right away. We initially decided on Latitude 42 but I was never super on board with that. We had just done that exact same thing on J’s birthday because I was told to pick where J wanted to go for her birthday and I didn’t have a lot of ideas then either.
Over the next couple of days, J and her mom had talked about Forget Me Not in Three Rivers. J’s mom saw pictures of the soft serve she and B got the previous weekend and thought that looked really good. I said why don’t we just meet in Three Rivers somewhere then. It was then I remembered a brewing not too far away that I’ve been looking for an excuse to go to.
We ended up meeting in Constantine at River Trade Brewing. The small brewery took over the 175 year building Constantine Brewing occupied a few a years ago. The restaurant is on Washington Street which is now BL-131 after the moved US-131 to a bypass around town. There is street parking on both sides of Washington Street or on side streets around the downtown area. We happened to pull up to spot on one side of the street while my in-laws were pulling in to a spot on the other side of the street right around 3 PM on Saturday. There weren’t a lot of changes made when River Trade Brewing moved in. You can still see the lettering for Constantine Brewing on the awning hanging over the front door.
Read more…Bagel Kitchen Westside
Early morning work shifts. I hate getting up for them but I do like that it gives me an opportunity to get out for breakfast.
I’m usually exhausted by the weekend. If we have nothing to get up for, I literally don’t. I’ll sleep in pretty late and wake up past time to go out for breakfast.
This past weekend, I had to work in Grand Rapids pretty early in the morning. My shift got over around 10:00 AM and as I was packing up to leave, I decided to look for someplace to grab a sandwich.
I was actually leaning towards a deli on the Beltline but luckily I checked the hours before I headed out there. They weren’t open on Saturday.
So, I just went to my go to and typed “bagel” in to Google. I came up with a couple of places I’ve never heard of and that’s good enough for me to go on an adventure.
Bagel Kitchen has two locations in Grand Rapids. One of them is in Gaslight Village near East Grand Rapids High School. That was kind of far from where I was but the other location is on the Westside of Grand Rapids on Leonard Street near Hamilton Avenue not far from the US-131 interchange. It was a little out of my way too but it was right off 131 so I headed there to find the shop in two story brick building that had been abandoned for a couple of years. Prior to the bagel shop, it was a drape shop and prior to that, it was a Halloween costume shop (but not a Spirit Halloween). The bagel shop on the westside is the second location for the husband and wife team that started making bagels while they lived in Costa Rica. They opened the EGR spot in 2021 and this one in late 2024.
Read more…Forget Me Not
745 S. US-131Does anyone else have to go “Needoh hunting?”
If you don’t have kids, I’m sure you have no idea what a Needoh is. Lucky you.
They’re stress toys. They’re essentially stress balls and if I’m being honest, they’re actually pretty fun to play with.
Finding them is impossible though. Lines form outside the Big Box stores every morning in hopes there was a new shipment. Small toy stores post them on their Facebook pages and they sell out quickly. It’s like trying to find a He-Man or a Cabbage Patch Kid. when I was a kid.
B has a bag full of Needoh’s but there’s still an adrenaline rush to actually finding them in the store so we keep looking.
We noticed a shop in Three Rivers occasionally posts about getting them. This past Saturday, J noticed a post and asked B if he wanted to take a chance driving to Three Rivers to see if they had any left. The post was about an hour old when he spotted it so there was no guarantee they’d still have some.
Forget Me Not is a small boutique on the west side of Three Rivers. The shop is in a shopping plaza on US-131 north of Broadway Street on the east side of the highway. It’s a pretty non-descript building with five other shops.
Read more…Angelo’s Italian Eatery
5401 Portage RoadWe have a couple of weekend with no skating competitions.
It was a little weird. We’ve been traveling through most of the month of April on weekends so when we finally got one at home, we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves (spoiler alert, I laid on the couch most of the weekend.)
The kids still had practice on Friday night but they were pretty much done by the time I got off work. I texted J as I was walking out of the office and said I was going to pick up pizza for dinner.
I’ve been trying to branch out a little bit more with our pizza orders. We’ve had a pretty regular order from Cottage Inn for years but I think everyone was getting tired of that. I’ve gone with some of the other chains recently and tried a new place or two. I keep telling myself I need to go back and revisit some of those places I haven’t been to in years.
One of those places is Angelo’s Italian Eatery on Portage Road near the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport. The small pizzeria is in a shopping plaza right at the entrance of the airport. The restaurant has been around as long as I’ve been in Kalamazoo. The last time I blogged about it was back in 2012 but we didn’t have the pizza then. There used to be another location in Kalamazoo Township. First it was at the BP (now Shell) station on Ravine Road then it moved across the street. That location is now closed and this location on Portage Road is actually under new ownership.
Read more…Jack in the Box (Tinley Park)
9550 179th StreetOne ore day in Illinois.
B had the last event for us at Ladybug in Orland Park at the Arctic Ice Arena. J and the kids headed to the rink around 8 AM while I headed to a Dunkin’ to get B breakfast.
I chose not to go anywhere for myself because I had plans on stopping somewhere as I was leaving town once he was done.
His event got over around 1 PM. The kids wanted to stay for the final solo ice dance event that was immediately after B’s event. We had two cars and I didn’t have a ton of interest in waiting around so I packed up my stuff and started the drive back to Kalamazoo.
My plan was to stop at the Jack in the Box in Tinley Park on my way home. The restaurant is on the corner of 179th Street and LaGrange Road/US-45. I noticed the restaurant on my way in to town on Thursday night and wanted to make a stop there at some point over the weekend. We have one opening in Battle Creek later this month and I wanted to get a jump on that. I passed a Jack in the Box several times when we were in Nashville a few weeks ago. I had the same intention then but never had the time to actually stop. This location opened late last year in what used to be an Arby’s after some major renovations to bring it in line with the Jack in the Box brand. It marks a return to the Chicagoland area 40 years after it left the market to focus on the southwestern footprint. The building is the very distinctive new style Jack in the Boxes with the logo on a red backdrop by the rest of the color highlights are done in purple.
Read more…Beggars Pizza (Orland Park)
11329 W. 143rd StreetI’m not going to leave Chicago without a pizza. That would just be stupid.
J and the kids went to a group dinner with skaters from our team in Kalamazoo and skaters from a team in Ann Arbor. The kids all get along so the coaches thought maybe the parents should get together too.
If we only had one car, I would have went with them but a dinner at a restaurant with a group of over 40 people did not sound like fun to me. J let me off the hook. They went to Papa Joe’s in Orland Park while I headed to our hotel for the night in Tinley Park.
I was really close to just ordering take out from Papa Joe’s but it was a little out of my way. Instead, I went with a Chicago area chain that I have never actually had before. I got so set in my ways with going to J’s family’s favorite place in Oak Lawn that I never branched out once she and I started dating.
I had a few options but ended up choosing Beggars Pizza on 143rd Street and Wolf Road in Orland Park. The restaurant is on the northwest side of the Chicago suburb in a shopping plaza is one of about 30 locations in the Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana area.
Read more…Miller’s Ale House (Orland Park)
15630 LaGrange RoadThe thing about figure skating competition is that there can be a lot of downtown.
Our kids compete in the National Solo Dance events (and B also competes in Excel free style events). and can have up to five events. Those are events are usually spread out over a couple of days and depending on how many entries there are in each event, the segments can be spread out over several hours. It’s not unusual for us to get to the rink at 8 AM and leave after 6 PM.
We were in Orland Park, IL a few weeks ago for the annual Ladybug competition hosted by the Glenview Figure Skating Club. The event moved to the Arctic Ice Arena in Orland Park this year which is an area both J and I spent a lot of time in as kids.
It was an easy drive for my parents too. They used to take my brother and I to a baseball training facility off 159th Street not too far from where the ice rink is now.
My mom and one of her friends came up for Thursday’s competition and when they had downtown, they didn’t want to leave so they ate lunch at the Original Six Bar & Grill inside the arena. That was kind of what I had planned for Friday but my mom didn’t want to eat there two days in a row.
We had about three hours between events so I suggested lunch. My mom said she wanted to leave for a little while. Not a big deal. There are a ton of restaurants not too far from the arena back on LaGrange Road. My mom said she didn’t care where we ate and left it up to me to pick.
I picked Miller’s Ale House on LaGrange Road near 156th Street. The Florida based chain has a little over 100 restaurants but the majority of those are still in Florida. There are five locations in the Chicago area including this one in Orland Park. As of this writing in May of 2026, there are no restaurants in Michigan. This location was built as new construction for Miller’s Ale House in 2018. It sits right next to and shares a parking lot with the Stan’s Donuts & Coffee I got breakfast at earlier in the day. That may have had some influence on why I picked this spot. It’s also a chain I’ve never been to.
Read more…Stan’s Donuts & Coffee (Orland Park)
15646 LaGrange RoadWe have a pretty set routine on competition days. We wake up in whatever cheap hotel we could find near the rink, get the kids partially ready, then hit up a Dunkin’ and a Starbucks on the way.
We were in Orland Park last week for the 51st Annual Ladybug competition. For the first time since we’ve been competing, the competition moved from the Homewood-Flossmoor Ice Arena to Artic Ice Arena in Orland Park.
J got a pretty good deal on a really nice Hampton Inn on LaGrange Road less than ten minutes from the rink. We had two cars because I didn’t have enough time off to join them for Thursday. I left Kalamazoo after work Thursday night and stayed with them for Friday and Saturday’s competition.
We got up and did our usual thing. The kids got partially ready for the day and we checked out of the hotel to head to the rink. We had to move hotels Friday night because we didn’t originally book that night because we didn’t know we had to stay until Saturday. When we went to add the room, it was obnoxiously expensive.
J took the kids on their usual run. Dunkin’ and Starbucks. Instead of heading straight to the rink, there was something else close by that I wanted to check out.
Stan’s Donuts & Coffee is on LaGrange Road south of 156th Street. LaGrange is the major thoroughfare through town and where the majority of shopping and dining is. Growing up about an hour from this area, Orland Park was always the treat when we wanted to do something special. They had restaurants we didn’t have. They had stores we didn’t have. The building where Stan’s Donuts currently sits started life as PDQ Chicken. That restaurant closed in 2019 and Stan’s moved in early in 2021.
Read more…Submarine City (Orland Park)
9573 W. 144th Place- Orland Park, IL 60462
- (708) 349-4909
- No Known Website
- Menu
My plan was to get to Orland Park in time to see B’s last skate of the night. Thanks to traffic on I-294, that didn’t happen.
We were in Orland Park, IL last week for the annual Ladybug competition. It moved this year to the Arctic Ice Arena in Orland Park.
J and I are both pretty familiar with Orland Park. She worked at the mall when she was in high school college. I used to go shopping at that mall when I was in high school. It was the “fancy” mall that my parents would drive to when we wanted to do something different. There were also better sporting goods stores in the area and that what my brother and I were really interested in when we were that age.
I got to the arena just as B’s scores were being read. His event was the last of the night so I finished watching the event, helped him get his stuff together, and talked to my mom for a bit who drove up for the day to watch the kids skate.
Because I was in such a hurry, I didn’t stop for dinner on my way from Kalamazoo to Orland Park. I hadn’t really eaten all day, just some gas station mini tacos, so I was hungry.
I was about to just head to fast food but realized that was a dumb idea. I was in the Chicago suburbs, I needed to get an Italian beef.
I headed north on LaGrange/US-45 to Submarine City. The longtime sandwich shop is in a shopping plaza on the corner of LaGrange and 144th Place. The building faces 144th and that’s the only way to access to the parking lot. The long brick building is home to five businesses. Submarine City is on the corner facing LaGrange.
Read more…Arctic Ice Arena
10700 160th StreetThree new rinks in three weeks.
We had three competitions in three weeks in three different cities. It was a hectic month.
We started the month with a one day competition at Arctic Edge Ice Arena in Canton. The following weekend we were at the Centennial Sportsplex in Nashville, TN. This past weekend, we moved on to Artic Ice Arena in Orland Park, IL.
J and the kids left Wednesday night to head to Orland Park but I still had to work on Thursday. My plan was to join them for B’s last skate on Thursday night but I literally walked in to the arena as they were announcing his score. I got screwed over by traffic on I-294.
Anyway.
Artic Ice Arena is on 160th Street near 108th Avenue in Orland Park. As I found on my way rushing to the arena to try and catch B skate, there is no sign at 108th Avenue pointing you towards the arena. I missed it an my GPS got all sorts of messed up. 160th Street is a dead end street so there’s no way come in from the other side. The road leads to a cul-de-sac that then transitions into a couple of large parking lots. The building opened in 1995 and was bought by a hockey parent in 2000. That hockey parent was the dad of a guy who would eventually go on to play for the Chicago Wolves.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 