Halloween...

Hayride at Spencer Farms pumpkin patch

I love this time of year because everything starts to become cozy. Sweaters, fuzzy slippers, scarves, and blankets. It also means Halloween. There are so many things I love about Halloween but the few things I hate makes this celebrated tradition my least favorite. 

I love the pumpkin patch, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, carnivals, and dressing up as superheroes, princesses, cartoon characters, vampires or witches. I hate scary movies and dressing up as creepy, ghoulish, evil characters. Scary movies give me anxiety and most creepy costumes come from those scary movies. I really want Halloween to be G rated!

My most favorite part of the tradition is the candy! I remember as a kid going around town with my mom and brothers getting candy from the people we knew. When we were done we would head to the elementary school gym for the Halloween carnival. Costume contest, games with prizes and candy, and a haunted house. I had so much fun running around playing with friends and staying far, far away from the haunted house. Returning home was always the best part!

My brothers and I would all sit around checking out our loot, trading and comparing, and eating as much candy as we could before falling asleep. 

Costume selections for trick-or-treating.

This year proved to be just like my memories from childhood. Emerson and Rhys love dress up, we have a bin full of costumes and accessories, so picking out a costume wasn't too hard. For weeks, Emerson talked about being Batman or Ironman or Go Go Power Ranger when it came to trick or treat he chose a skeleton costume and black hat. Rhys chose Superman and stuck with it.

Carnival games.

The night before we headed to the park for a carnival. There were games with prizes, hot chocolate and popcorn, story telling, a hayride and dancing. The boys had a blast!

This is our neighbor. She made this stilt spirt costume and calls herself "Creature."

On Halloween we walked around our neighborhood meeting and chatting with everyone while trick-or-treating. I was amazed how much fun we had and how everyone gets into to the festivities. The boys lasted two hours and then we headed home to pass out candy for the last hour. 

When we settled in for the night, we dumped the candy on the coffee table and picked out our favorites and ate candy until the boys fell asleep. We had a very awesome October capped off with an even better Halloween night!

Thankful...

A Sycamore grove in Prophetstown State Park.

For days like today. Days that we all wake up happy and healthy. Days that the sun is shining bright and the sky is a prefect shade of blue. Days that the whether is mild and inviting for us to spend outside. Days that we all get to be together. 

November is the month that reminds us to be thankful. I have decided that I will use this month to reflect and share what I am thankful and grateful for everyday.  

In search of...

The perfect apple crisp.

It's no secret, I love apple crisp and every fall I search for a recipe that will become my recipe. This year I was determined to come up with my own, which is where I take another recipe and change it up for our tastes. I will tell you, I tried three times and I wasn't really thrilled with any of the attempts. Our first try ended in the trash because of a cayenne- cinnamon mix up. The second try, I adjusted the amounts of cinnamon and added to ginger to get the sweet spicy taste, which was nice but wasn't spectacular. The third time, I went to a different recipe all together and adjusted the cinnamon and that still didn't satisfy.

Until, I found a recipe from Al Roker. I know, seems a little strange, but I found it in my Facebook feed and I read it and thought why not try it. This did not disappoint! We all loved it. I believe I have found my favorite apple crisp recipe. I made some changes to the recipe and that is what I will share below but you can check out the original recipe in the link above.

Ingredients

Apple Filling:

8 cups of assorted apples (pears can be used)

6 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 tablespoons butter

1/8 cup apple cider

Crispy Topping:

1-1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup old fashioned oats

1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

Pinch ground nutmeg

8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), softened

Preparation

Cook apples:

Halve, core and slice apples. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the sugar and spices. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add 2 tablespoons butter to melt. Add the apples and stir well. Cover skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until juices are released and apple have begun to soften, about 15 minutes. Uncover skillet and add cider. Continue to simmer the apples until juices have thickened, another 5-6 minutes.

Make crispy topping:

Preheat oven to 350'F. In a large bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, old fashioned oats, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Add butter and work in with your fingers until mixture is crumbly. Use your hands to squeeze and press mixture together so that clumps form, this gets the butter fully incorporated and moistens the crumb thoroughly. Break up large clumps into smaller pieces.

Bake crisp:

Place cooked apples and all the syrupy liquid into a pre-buttered 9x13 baking dish. Spread the crispy topping mixture over the top of the apples.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until filling is bubbly and topping is crispy. 

Apple crisp served with vanilla ice cream flavored with carmel and miniature chocolate peanut butter cups.

Get Out and Go...

Hiking and sharing. 

The past couple of weeks we have been busy getting out and hiking locally. The weather has been prefect and the leaves this year have been unbelievable!

My friend Hollie at Muscles and Munchkins asked me to share with her readers some inspiration to get out and go. Check out my two part series over at Muscles and Munchkins on Hiking with Your Kids: How to Plan and Hiking with Your Kids: Patience and Practice for some ways to approach hiking with your kids. 

Fall Break...

Comes to an end. 

This past weekend was the end of our two week fall break. We had a great time checking out parks, hiking, going on scavenger hunts, going to the gym, playing in our backyard, discovering the best apple crisp recipe, and hanging out with friends. 

This is a picture from our family hike at Holliday Park. Unfortunately, it was cut short because of rain but we were able to spend sometime outside. I learned that while hiking and doing scavenger hunts I enjoy making bouquets out of my finds, which made my head swim with ideas of things to make. 

We have had fun changing up our routine for a couple weeks and enjoying the awesome Indian summer weather but I think we are all ready to get back into our school routine, again. 

Fall Break...

Traditions.

This weekend was full of so many of the things we love to do during fall break. We carved pumpkins, had family movie night, ate apple crisp and went for hike.

Every time I see Snake Grass, Emerson and I try to make it whistle. My brothers and I spent a lot of time as kids playing in the creek near our house and loved when the Snake Grass was strong enough to blow like a whistle. That is my favorite picture of the weekend.

This is one that I love also!

Get out and go...

Start a series. 

I wrote this post a couple years ago during one of my attempts at starting this blog. I have known since I had the idea of starting a blog I would share my travels. I have been going through the handfuls of posts that are still drafts and found this. The story on how we decided to see as many of our national parks as we can and when I came up the Get Out and Go idea for my blog. This was written in early 2012.

This past October (2011), we had some friends getting married in Las Vegas. Eric was all set to go and I was planning on staying home because we had a three month old baby. As we got closer to October, I was really comfortable with the idea of tagging along with the baby and hanging out while he went to the wedding. The only things I asked to do was to go to the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon and the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. I knew that those places were easy trips to make so, I was not asking for too much.

Eric agreed to those things and started looking into it how to get there, where to get a car, and where we should stay. As he was figuring out those details he started looking at other parks near by and what else we could see and if adding more days before the wedding or after the wedding would be better.  That's when he came up with the idea to fly out early rent a car and go to Zion, Bryce and Grand Canyon National Parks. I was like awesome, lets do this but we will only do little hikes because we have a three month old and I will have to feed him and that might be hard to do and no camping.

We flew to Vegas, got in a car and drove for what seemed like forever to get to Zion and when we got there we were blown away. We found an easy hike up a side of a mountain and set out on our first family hike.

After we hiked the short hike and shuttled to a few points of interest we went to the lodge area to hang out on the lawn, have some lunch, and feed the baby.  During that time, we talked about going to more parks because we bought a park pass and I said why not go see more before the pass expires.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it all started.  We bought a park pass that was good for a year and I wanted to get our moneys worth. I might have been a little drunk on the view and the moment when I suggested that.

The great lawn.

So, I think Zion National Park, a park I did not know existed until a few weeks before our trip, was the catalyst for wanting to go to as many national parks as we can. Look at that view, that prefect blue sky, the red rocks of those mountains and if you could feel the warmth of the sun and the smell of fall in the air, you would totally get it.

Here is a little back ground, so you can see that this idea wasn't completely off of our radar. When I met Eric, he was preparing to go on a camping trip to Glacier, Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks with some college friends. I had been to the Smokey Mountains, Blue Ridge Trail and Rock Mountain National Parks. So, going to the parks is something that both of us had done without the other. I grew up camping and hiking. He is a boy and like most boys, loves doing outdoor things like that.

____________________________

That was where I had ended the story, before.

We went on to see several other places, then to Arizona and a short stay in Flagstaff before heading back to see the Hoover Dam, the Las Vegas sign and our friends get married.

That was when our family trips started. This story was the reason why I wanted to write my Get Out and Go series. We love traveling together, since we started dating we have covered many miles and over half of the states. With each trip, I journaled and photographed everything. I wanted to share our travels beyond those journals to encourage others to get out and go and see these places that our great country has to offer. Like Zion, a place I didn't know until shortly before the trip. As well as, showing that these trips can be done with kids of any age.

My goal with writing this series is to share our stories from our smallest of journeys to the biggest. Exploring our own backyard is just as important as traveling far, so I will share our favorite walking paths and parks to playing in our very own back yard with our boys. Getting out of our house and being active is what get out and go is all about.