Black Hills

 Doug and I both dearly miss the black hills and all the fun family things they have to do there, don't get me wrong we love where we are, but we do miss the hills and our friends we left there. So we planned a trip to go and play and see what friends we could. Our trip lost a day due to some scheduling changes, but we still crammed a ton into our weekend getaway. We left one day after work and got as far as we could then crashed in a hotel, the next day we finished the drive to spearfish where our fun began, we went to the fish hatchery (which is so sadly slotted to close the first of oct) but it is one of my favorite hatchery's so we wanted to take the kids there in the event they do actually close it. The kids loved feeding the fish and seeing the historic train cars and buildings 

 The hatchery is right by the city park, which is a "PARK WITH A PURPOSE" I love the parks that are designed thematically for the area they are always so fun and have great purpose.

 After the park we went to the city swimming pool which I still have to upload those pictures, we swam almost everyday of our vacation which made it that much better for the kids, we are all fish we just love the water. After we had explored spearfish and crammed in all we could in one day with a 2 & 4 year old and a pregnant lady we headed to deadwood, where we stayed at a hotel with the pool below, our favorite! And we had the whole place to ourselves, of course it is pirate themed so that really is perfect for our kids, they couldn't get enough of it.

 Both Addy and James have significantly improved in their swimming skills this year  they are doing so good which makes me feel much better about giving them a little space to keep improving, not always easy to do.

 They had a river that rolled around to a jungle which Doug and jim had a great time on, but along the way you could play basket ball which of course was a hit with jim, he is so strong he held himself waiting for me to take the picture and then just kept hanging because he could. Then he dropped into the water, came up saying again, again!

 After a fun time in deadwood, we headed to the lake and hill city, this is on of our favorite lakes ever, an all of our kids have been hiked around it while still inside me, although I must say the improvements they have made recently made this kids hike by far the easiest. Addy and James loved hiking around the lake and climbing the rocks, they also loved going out on the row boat with dad

 They played out on the boat for an hour or so, finding fish and frogs, and all kinds of fun. 

We also made it to some of our favorite restaurants and finally into rapid so we could see what friends we could, we went to our old ward and it was nice to be there. All in all we had a great time, hard to believe but this is the condensed version of our trip, it was so fun. On the way home we stopped in my hometown and saw my BF, we had such a nice visit, we also met my brother and picked up two of his kids, more to come on that. We made it home and all went to bed, we were exhausted.