Conservatory Photos

Sara and I walked around Lincoln Park for a couple hours on Saturday.  It was such a beautiful fall day but we had to cut short our walk as I wasn't feeling the best. I took some photos while we walked around inside the Conservatory.  You can see them here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajdoudt/

Fall Comes to Chicago

With Sara away in San Francisco at a conference, I went down to Lincoln Park and took some pictures of Chicago in Fall:

Up, Up and Away!

Due to an IU home football game last weekend every hotel was booked in town so we had to stay at a motel in Bedford about 30 minutes south of Bloomington. Sara was very excited about this (no joke) as this was her first time staying in a motel. And it certainly lived up (down?) to her expectations as it was a very typical motel with some questionable cleanliness, but it was a roof over our head so it did the job.  We had to meet our pilot at 7am so we got up at 5:45am, had a bite to eat of Cardamom bread (homemade by Sara) and fruit, and headed out to Bloomington.

As luck would have it the other people that were supposed to be in the same basket as us did not show up which meant more space for us.  The basket wasn't too big so I'm not sure how we would have fit two more people in with us.  The day before the pilot had taken up eight (that's right, eight) people and they actually skydived out of the basket.  Wow.  We would not be jumping out of the basket today...just a calm trip up to about 3300 feet.

We drove out to the liftoff site (an open field used for band practice) and helped get the balloon prepped for flight.  Soon enough we had liftoff...

And, yes, it was that loud (and hot) when the pilot heated up the balloon. Sara and dad then followed along in the "chase" van.  Here are some pictures from the morning:



If you want to see more pictures that I took during the flight feel free to check out my Flickr page.

Turkey Run

Sara and I made a trip down to Indiana last weekend to complete a birthday gift for my mom.  The entire family had gone in together back in June (on her actual birthday) to get mom two tickets for a hot air balloon ride, and I was lucky that my mom asked me to join her for the ride - my dad is not a fan of heights so he was all to happy to have someone else go. She then scheduled this past Sunday morning for the sunrise flight in Bloomington, Indiana.  Before the Sunday morning flight we met up at Turkey Run State Park on Saturday for a picnic and hike.  Here are some of the pictures from our hike:




After our hike we headed down towards Bloomington but made a stop at one of the covered bridges nearby:




We then enjoyed a Mexican dinner where my dad ordered "the special" that included three plates of food, and unbelievably he couldn't finish all of it.  Maybe the first time I've seen that happen.

We then hit the sack as we had an early morning ahead of us...

Bears Game

Thanks to Alan and Rhonda Wilson, Sara and I got tickets to the Bears vs Carolina Panthers game. It was awesome with all sorts of scoring and we even saw Devin Hester set an NFL record with his 11th punt return for a touchdown.  Here are a few pictures from the day: