Summer Vacation

Daddy had a meeting to go to out in Rapid City last week, so we packed up Grandma with us and headed out there with him. Grandma helped Mommy out so much those first two days while Daddy was gone and then he came back and PaPa drove out too and we enjoyed a really nice (but really HOT) weekend of being tourists....

The first order of business was riding the train through the black hills. PaPa and Harrison have been talking about this for weeks. They wanted to be conductors! All the excitement leading up to the excursion must have worn Harrison out though, because he ended up falling asleep halfway through the ride! The rumble of the train tracks had that effect on the babies too. Everyone got in a nice nap that day!
Our last day, I played "social director" and while we ate breakfast I looked through all the little brochures from the little display of attractions. I decided on a full day. Starting with Dinosaur Park (it's not really a park, just a bunch of gigantic dinosaur statues to climb on and walk around and it's way up on a hill so you can see all of Rapid City....)
Since it was so hot, we found a place to stop and let everyone cool off. It was an indoor, black light mini golf place....the babies really liked that place! Outside they had a little maze we tried out and we also got to go panning for jewels. This was one of my favorite parts! Someday we'll get the video uploaded where you can hear me gasp every time I pulled my pan out of the water and found more colorful stones....and gold nuggets!!!!


Next up was Bear Country USA! It's a drive through wildlife park and we really lucked out because as we were driving through the bears, they all started running which concerned us just for a second until we saw the food truck come barreling through. It was pretty neat to watch those bears get fed! And we had lots of time to watch because one of the bears walked over and sat down right in front of our car. We didn't have any choice but to wait until he was ready to let us go!

Our last stop that day was Reptile Gardens. We watched a Crocodile show and even each touched a baby alligator and we visited with some tortoises , enjoyed a run through some misting fans (did we mention it was hot!?!), peeked in on some prairie dogs. The last show of the day was a snake show and you'll never guess which of us kiddos enjoyed petting the big snake the most........Madison!
Needless to say, we were exhausted after all that! But it sure was a fun way to spend the last week of our summer vacation!

School!

I am officially a school girl! I started Kindergarten today and I loved it! I was so excited to go. Grandma was nice enough to come over and see me go and to stay with the other kiddos so Mom and Dad could both take me on my first day. I had a fantastic day and cannot wait to go back tomorrow!


P.S. We will post pictures from our vacation last week --- just so many for us to still sort through!

More Dance Photos (posted by Mom)

Just got Reagan's professional pictures back from the recital. This lady does such a great job capturing Reagan's dimples and smile (she took Reagan's cheerleading shots last year and it's still one of my favorites). I just love them!

Potter County Fair

Sunday we headed out to the fair to watch the Demolition Derby. Grandma was kind enough to stay back and watch the babies so they wouldn't have to be subjected to the noise, mud splatter and raindrops that were sprinkling on us. We had a great time, as usual.....here's just a few pictures of us....
The all-American boy....Dad let us get anything at the concession stand....ice cream, candy, whatever. Harrison picked......a hot dog and lemonade. And, of course, never leaves home without his shades. He even has a sunglass-made tan line!
The crashing was fun but Harrison seemed most excited by the fire trucks spraying water on the dirt and all the John Deere equipment that came in for the clean up!

Yesterday was a big day. I had to go up to the clinic to get my shots for school. It was a rough experience, but it's over and Mom surprised me with a lunch date and a new Barbie to celebrate what a big girl I am becoming. Hard to believe only two more weeks and I will be in full day Kindergarten. Yikes! I can't wait. Mom, on the other hand, is a little more sad about this major life change!

Dancing Queen

My dance recital was on Saturday night. Silly Mommy totally dropped the ball and forgot to snap a picture of me all dolled up in my dress and beautifully done hair (thank you Joey!!!). Hopefully the professional pictures they took that day will turn out and we can just post that one when it comes in. Oops....

Instead, here are just a few action shots from the recital....

Sneak Peak of 1/2 of Us

There was a photographer in town this weekend taking pictures of kiddos for a piece in our local paper called Tomorrow's Leaders. Mom and Dad thought we'd go ahead and give it a shot to try and get a picture of all four kiddos together. Mom was helping to coordinate the afternoon so she gets the pictures for free, so what the heck, right? Well, we're not sure what kind of picture will turn out, but we are happy to report that we made it through the sitting with NO TEARS. We all did great and we're hopeful for a decent picture of us kids. We'll let you know in a couple weeks when they come back!

Here's a picture of Kennedy and Madison in their pretty dresses....
They snuggled up together for a bottle and just about melted Mom's heart. How lucky are we to have these girls??????

Visitors!

We had such a great visit with Aunt Jen, Uncle Kevin and our cousin Bobby this past week. Unfortunately, the craziness of the visitors and all our activities means that there aren't a lot of camera shots to showcase all our fun. But we did take a few pictures the day that we headed up to Aberdeen to walk around Storybook Land and play mini golf....

We all took a spin on the carousel....

For some reason, Harrison decided he and Mommy need to ride on a non-moving object on the carousel, so she was taking these pictures from this little bench....and yes, that is Harrison posing for a picture with his new buddy Spiderman....We fed some baby goats....We climbed on some pheasants (now this part may be a bit particular to a trip to South Dakota!)
Harrison was happy to find a John Deere tractor to sit on....
We headed over to play mini golf afterwards and had a great time....
We love this shot of Bobby celebrating after his ball made it into the cup....Harrison developed a great strategy after his first shot of just picking up the ball and strategically placing it right next to the hole for his next shot....Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to get a good shot of the three of us together....but luckily that is just because we were too busy having fun to stop for mom to take a picture!
We had a great visit with them and were sad to see them leave this morning. Love you!