Carli is 4 and playing in the rain!

Tropical storm Hermine is hitting us hard! It has been raining since yesterday with no end in sight! My girls absolutely love playing out in the rain so while the big kids were at school yesterday the little girls went out to play. :) I never have taken good shots of Carli this year so I tried to get some of her with her gorgeous curls from the rain. Here are the ones of her and then some from the rain dancing!

Carli turned 4 this year (ok, in January, but it was still this year!)

She loves the rain!

Silly face...

Weird pose...she doesn't just "stop and smile."

Another weird pose

Brooke dancing in the rain!

She LOVES being outside in the puddles!

4 Eagle Ranch

We spent a week in Vail, CO, with my family in August. What an awesome place! We had such a great time doing all kinds of activities. I'm just starting to sift through all my pictures so there will be more posts on Colorado, but to start off with here are the pictures from our evening at 4 Eagle Rach.

The ranch is about 25 minutes from Vail nestled back in the mountains away from the freeway and all the hustle and bustle. What a fabulous fun place! Wednesday nights are their "Western Family night." Here is 1 view of the rach. These were all the buildings. Right at the entrance was this cool metal horse that all the kids could fit on! The littl red headed boy sitting with Kate is my nephew, Harper.

Megan, Brooke, Harper, Kate, Brandon, Carli--what a troop of kids!

They had a fun, very primitive, playground for the kids. The seesaw was a hit. Here's Kate taking a little break on it. Carli is on the other end.

Carli going down the slide

There were also gorgeous horses on the ranch. We decided to take a ride. :)Kate, Megan, and I went on a half hour ride up into the hills around the ranch. It was really great. The scenery was really gorgeous.There were unlimited hay rides. We went on them many, many, many times. :)Kate and Megan get up close to the horses pulling the wagon. They were big!Here are the two clowns on the hay ride. :) Megan loves to make silly faces for the camera lately. Kate had a really rough time with the dry weather. She couldn't stop licking her lips. She looked like this for a couple weeks. It was pretty bad.Megan and the scenery

Carli got to go on a pony ride! She loved it!

Carli and Harper on their poniesThey had the yummiest grilled corn for us to eat all night long. It was soooo good! The kids all had more than 1--so did I. :) Looks like Carli is licking this one. lol!Carli helping Brooke eat some corn. Brooke loved it, too!

A close up of the corn eating. Couldn't resist a picture of those adorable lips!They had a guy singing for the kids and they could play with these instruments on the blanket while he was doing his songs. There were tons of kids all the over the blanket at the beginning. Brooke stayed there for quite a while with Grandma and eventually she got her turn with the instruments.She loved the tamborines!

During dinner there was live music in the other room and we could here it in the room that we were in. Here are Harper and Brooke dancing together! It was the most precious thing!!! Brooke loved it!Harper was having fun, too, until he realized that Brooke's hands were sticky and here he is wiping them on his jacket. :) Look at Brooke's face! She loved her cousin dancing with her!

The kids loved roasting marshmallows around the fire. They were sure yummy! Brandon and Megan are both in this shot.Brandon inspecting his marshmallow.Done!Kate's turn

Brandon found a couple boys to hang out with. The driver of this wagon let them ride with him several times.

This was a really great place. We were there for 4 hours and we only left because we couldn't see where the kids were running off to anymore! They never got tired or bored while we were there. They still talk about our evening at the ranch. Next time we go up to Colorado we will most definitely go there again!

Random Stuff

August has been a busy month at our house! Here are a few things that have happened:

The girls had a pretend tea party in the kitchen.Brooke "eating" her water at the pretend tea party Carli had some dental work done at the hospital. She is not tolerant of the dentist doing work in his office so we had to take drastic measures. She did great, but it was a rough time for her. Here she is all snug in the wagon going back to the car after her procedure. Her dentist was so sweet and brought her a cute stuffed animal for her to snuggle with.

Carli and her great little friend had a blast dressing up when she came to play the day after Carli's hospital experience. They put on a great show dancing to the "Enchanted" soundtrack. Aren't they adorable?!

Brandon is playing percussion this year in 6th grade. He loves it! He received his supplies at band camp and went to town practicing!

I'm slowly working my way through my hundreds of photos from our summer. Hope to have some more posted soon!