happy halloween!!

A few pictures from this weekend's Halloween activities...


Alicia dressed as Cinderella for trick-o-treating today.

Alicia, mommy & daddy at neighbor's house

Cinderella visiting Carl's house on Saturday.

Alicia as Princess Sleeping Beauty for preschool class party this week.

apple picking with friends

In September ,we went to a local Chicagoland apple orchard with our friends and kids to find some tasty treats! Alicia, Carl, Lucas, Megan, and even Hannah joined in the apple picking fun. Despite the selection of apples at the kid-picking level, they still had a great time, while the mommys and daddys took turns using the apple picker stick (or in a few instances, that was lifting kids into the trees to pick higher apples) to get some apples off the tree. It was a nice afternoon in the orchard on a newly fall crisp day to enjoy some crispy crunchy apples!

Annual Apple River Canyon State Park

It is that time of year again when we headed off to the Apple River Canyon State Park near Stockton.
As you all know, we visit here every October. Mommy and daddy started going there when they were in college, when they first started dating. It has changed over the years little by little there, that is for sure. Some of the trails are not in the best shape, as some of the wooden steps are rotting away, but one thing always seems to stay the same, is the natural beauty. So here's to many more years of enjoying mother nature's backyard of color. http://picasaweb.google.com/heather.kluesner/AppleCanyon2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJiS06DBoNaypAE#

happy 8th wedding anniversary mommy & daddy

Happy anniversary to the best mommy and daddy I could ever ask for!
It's been 8 years since mommy and daddy got married on their special day.
Love you lots!

day trip to Michigan

Last month we took a quick day trip to Michigan. Neither of us had ever been to Michigan, so Drew and I thought it would be a fun day to get away with Alicia and enjoy the fall weather and the trip to somewhere new! Being so close to Chicagoland, we thought why not, and headed out earlier in the morning and set off to find an orchard for apple picking. We found a nice small orchard near Coloma, Michigan here http://www.jollayorchards.com/ It had such a great apple selection when we went there, plus it was a pick-u-own apple orchard which Alicia loved. We even tried to pick our own raspberries there too, but it became too much of a task, so we ended up buying a pre-picked pint from the farm stand near the orchard instead. :) oh well, it was still fun. At the orchard, you ride via a tractor/wagon hay ride into the fields and are dropped off at select locations and start grooming the trees for your perfect apples. I think we ate our fair share while we were picking our apples to take home as well, which was a nice tasty treat. For some reason, the apples you get to pick right from the tree are so much more enjoyable, not to mention tastier than the ones you get at the store. yummo. While we were in Michigan, on the way home from the orchards, we decided to find Lake Michigan and head to the lakeshore for a few minutes before we headed back home for the day. It was a bit chilly out there, but was still very pretty. Alicia called the water "cold and chilly" and did not want to put her toes anywhere near the water after the first quick dip. Plus near the lake, we found a great spot with a kids playground on the beach that Alicia thought was pretty cool. Check out the link below here that has a few more fun photos from our day trip. There was just way too many cute ones to post in one collage. Enjoy. http://picasaweb.google.com/heather.kluesner/MichiganDayTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCKL1zcfU9Mf9tgE#

Alicia has a cousin!

Alicia met her first cousin this morning, as Cali Ann Arnold came into this world yesterday.

Cali's parents are Drew's sister Ann (Fred) and Todd Arnold.

She was born on 10/09/2010 at 8:31pm.

She tipped the scales at 8lbs 1 oz and 20.5 inches long.

Mommy, Daddy, and Cali are doing great.

We were in the area (kinda... future apple canyon post coming soon), when we received a text from Fred saying her water broke. We thought it'd be a great learning opportunity for Alicia to visit a hospital for happy occasions, and so she could get a better understanding of the baby delivery process, so we re-arranged our plans and headed to Dubuque.

It appears though, that Cali was trying real hard to have Uncle Drew win the baby pool with a 10/10/10 10am baby. (it should be noted though that she was born on 10/10/10 if located in more than 1/2 of the world, and 10am in Korea). Thanks for Trying Cali.

Enough of my verbage. On to the pictures.

You can read more about Cali and her families adventures here: http://arnoldfamilysite.blogspot.com/

WTTW fun walk & Lincoln Park Zoo

Here's some pictures from this summer's WTTW fun walk and our impromptu trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Alicia had a great time meeting the characters and walking through the park. Along the way, we met Elmo, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Duck from WordWorld, and of course, our favorite, Curious George!! We even saw a few other familiar characters riding golf carts throughout the park too, like Sid the Science Kid and WordGirl. We met up with the Fosco family at the WTTW walk too, but Zoey was still a little afraid of the characters and didn't enjoy it as much as Alicia did. However, Zoey really seemed to like the music and the stroller ride through the park!

Later that morning, we went on a quick trip through the Lincoln Park Zoo since we were right next to it, and we had never been there before. What a nice free zoo to visit!

mommy's kitchen help