Halloween

This year Aubrey wanted a pumpkin with a scary smile and Emily wanted a candy corn pumpkin. What the girls want, the girls get. At least in terms of pumpkins. They had fun cleaning out the pumpkins and directing me during carving.

Emily decided to go as one of the fairy characters from her favorite book series: Rainbow Magic and Aubrey chose a monarch butterfly this year. The girls have gotten plenty of use out of their costumes this year: Great Wolf Lodge, Chicago, Ridgeview's costume party, dance classes, and halloween night.

On Halloween night we get together with other families in the neighborhood who have kiddos around Emily and Aubrey's age. We are five years in the making of pizza and trick or treating with neighborhood families. We are happy to keep this tradition going as long as the kiddos are up for it!

Gold Belt

Emily's now a gold belt, don't mess with this girl! :)

Fall Getaway

Every year we venture down to Chicago to visit my sister and her family over MEA weekend and this year was no different. Except for the fact that they moved to a new house in a new town this summer! So instead of visiting them in their south Chicago home, we made the pilgrimage to Westmont, Illinois which is about 20 miles west of Chicago.

On our way down, we spent one night at the Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells swimming, playing, and breaking in our Halloween costumes. This has become an anticipated part of our fall trip and we've had a lot of fun with it every year.

We spent our time in Chicago playing, celebrating both Marcus and William's birthdays, and enjoying some more Halloween events. The casket race was fun to watch and the spooky forest tour gave us all shivers down our spines!

We're looking forward to continuing the Halloween celebrations and so glad we finally got to check out the Mulfort-Stephens' new place!

Apple Jack Orchard

Our yearly tradition with the Nolby family was at risk of being cancelled due to weather. In fact, we had to reschedule the day but we still made it to the orchard with them. This yer we tried a new orchard: Apple Jack Orchard. It was a fun day filled with playing, corn mazing, apple picking, and lunching. The kids had fun on the bouncy bubble, zipline, and corn maze. We were also able to pick a bunch of honey crisp apples! The plan is to make apple crisp :)

After the orchard, we went for a late lunch at the Peppermint Twist. We have been with Greg a couple of times and knew it would be a success with large outdoor play and dining areas. The kiddos had a great time and I'm so happy that we were able to keep this tradition (of 7 years now!) going with this gang :)