Letting the cat out of the bag.....

I'm giving you guys a sneak peak at Emma's Halloween costume! When we bought it she wasn't too happy about the head piece so I knew we would need to try it on a few times at home to get used to it. She is really digging the costume and even says "I'm cute". I will definitely put more pictures up from Halloween night. Oh and if you can't tell what she is, she's a kitty cat!

Fire Safety

Camping

Over Columbus Day weekend we went camping with Steve and Shannon. In the last 6 months or so we have re-established a great friendship with them after not having seen each other in 8 years! I affectionately refer to them as our "couple twin" because our relationships have followed very similar paths over the years and we didn't even know it.

So we decided to do a fall camping trip with them (we left Emma with Andrew's parents) down to Clinton Lake, about 40 minutes from Bloomington. We left Friday late morning to head over a pick up Steve and Shannon. At this time it was about 45 degrees and raining....yuck! Both Shannon and I were like "what are we doing?!" But Andrew promised that things were supposed to clear up later in the day. To prevent us from having to set up all our stuff in the rain we decided to try and wait it out a little bit with a stop at ISU for some cheese balls at The Pub II. As always the food and especially the cheese balls were extra tasty. We finally made it down to the campground and the rain had stopped (thankfully!). We didn't have reservations because all the reserved sites had already been taken previously, but because of the crappy weather all the reservations had been cancelled. So we got to pick our favorite site in a cul-de-sac where no one else was.

Shannon and I traded off making food and we all ate great! Pretty much everything we made was cooked over the camp fire, and it was all tasty. On Saturday the sun was out and we went for a ride on the lake for our last boat ride of the year. It was a little chilly and we were all bundled up, but as long as Andrew didn't go too fast it was very comfortable. We also went on a nice hike around part of the lake and looked at the beautiful trees as well as some other camp sites. Saturday night got pretty chilly but we had plenty of fire wood to keep us toasty and I even brought a space heater for the tent, which really helped.

Sunday we got up early and packed up to head home. Emma was sure happy to see us when we went to pick her up, but it sounded like she had a great time. Although on the first night she was there Sue slipped down a few stairs and broke her wrist so she was out of commission for the whole weekend!

Tent City

My favorite tree--so pretty!

Fall Colors

There were lots of deer eating berries in our cul-de-sac

Steve and Shannon

Me and my Boy

Huddled around the fire

Andrew and Steve

Shannon and me

Honey Hill Orchards

We headed out again this year to Honey Hill Orchards to pick some apples and pumpkins. Last year we had this beautiful day with sunny skies and high temps, this year was nothing like that. It was freaking cold, and rainy and cloudy, YUCK! But we made the most of it anyway. Emma really dug the horse they had there and the other animals as well, but mostly the horse. She even petted the horse, but when it came to giving it an apple she left that up to Dad. We took their tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch and picked out 4 pumpkins (one for Frank too!). Emma thought this was pretty cool and liked looking around at all the pumpkins. Then we headed over to the apple trees and started picking them. Once Emma got her hands on one apple she was pretty much focused on just eating it and didn't really care about getting any more. They had a nice selection of good apples to choose from, which was nice. We finished out the visit with apple cider donuts and hot apple cider....delish! With our apples I made carmel apples (super easy!) and apple crisp (super yummy) with Oberweis cinnamon ice cream. I love apples. We still have enough apples to make a pie, so if I get motivated enough to do that I will.