Colorado and Casen's 4th Birthday!

After the family reunion in St. George we carpooled with the Laniers and headed to their home in Colorado. The kids loved getting to spend a week in the country!

We stopped at "The Hole in the Rock" just mast Moab on our drive to the Lanier's house. It was a nice little break and the kids had fun running around looking at all the cool stuff, including this "Mater." :)

This Jeep really was pretty cool. The wheels were made out of all kinds of small pieces of metal, old utensils, tools, nails, etc.

Monday morning we all had fun weeding the garden. The kids didn't last too long! Brinley and Andelin had fun picking and eating peas. So fun! I want a garden some day!

Yummy watermelon on the front balcony.

Pretty sweet poses these kids have, Marlee will learn from the eventually!

Marlee sure loved getting to see all the animals, especially the horses! She even fed some out of her hand and loved it.

Casen was so excited when Uncle Joe took him for a REAL tractor ride.

He was beyond thrilled when Joe let him drive it -- all by himself :) He was pretty proud!

We headed to the indian ruins one morning, they are less a few miles from their house and pretty fun to go look at.

We lined the kids up for a photo last time we were here, expect Marlee was the size of an orange on my belly at that time :)

I LOVED the beautiful rolling fields of green hay and golden wheat, especially against the pretty blue sky.

Casen thought it was so pretty he said "We should move to this pretty city"

The kids had fun with this dog Chancey. Here they are walking it back to Grandma Lanier's house. The little old wood house in front of them was the original homestead house that Joe's Great-Great Grandpa built. It had the first wood floors in the area and they held a town dance there. So tiny! Pretty neat to see it still standing.

Wednesday we packed up and headed to the river. We had a yummy picnic from Aunt Jenn before heading into the water.

Casen wanted to jump off the "cliffs" like some of the other big boys. Dallin helped him climb up.

Go Casen! He was pretty excited and even did it again.

Brinley collected rocks most the time :)

We had home-made pizzas that night and Casen had fun making his very own masterpiece.

Cute little Marlee girl eating her morning dose of Juice Plus gummies, which she loves and would eat a whole container full!

All the little girls enjoying home-made popsicles from Aunt Jenn

Casen turned 4!! Can't believe my baby boy is so grown up. Aunt Jenn made it a special morning with this cute birthday sign and some rainbow streamer things for the kids to run through.

Joe's extended family had a huge family reunion while we were there. The whole day was one big party, and Casen thought it was the perfect way to celebrate his birthday!

Casen was pretty excited when Uncle Joe took him on a horse ride on his birthday!

On serious sub sandwich!

I felt kinda bad not throwing him a "real" birthday party, especially since he had requested a Transformers party, but he was still pretty happy with his rainbow chip cake :)

All his cousin's singing happy birthday!

I was holding the phone so that Ryan could sing with us and sing happy birthday over FaceTime.

Casen got a remote control car and had a lot of fun with it. I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and the list when something like this:
- Remote control truck
- Remote control boat
- Remote control helicopter
- Remote control tractor
- Remote control race car
- Remote control skate board with a guy on it
- Remote control 4 -wheeler
- Remote control etc, etc, etc
- After all the remote control items he had another dozen things, I just thought it was pretty funny how he started :)

It was quite the feat for Marlee to pick this two balls up at once!

Marlee loved this little play horse...

She loved the play horse even more than the real horse ride I think. I couldn't tell how much fun she was having until it was time to get off and she sure didn't want to!

Joe gave my kids several rides and most kids only got one (there was a lot of kids cause of the reunion!). He was extra nice to them, lucky kids.

These are the parents of a friend Joan Lasura that lived in Mississippi with us. She wasn't able to make it to the reunion, but I thought it would be fun to grab a shot with her parents and send it to her :)

That night they had a "closing show". They called Casen up and over 100 people from the reunion sang to him. He was so proud, it was way too cute!

I taught Andelin and Laurie the "snowman" song and the kids had a great time performing it for everyone! Here they are waiting for the music to start with the snowman all built together.

They performed on a bigflat bed trailer that they were using for the stage. It was super stormy outside that night, you can kinda see it in the background.

The kids loved dancing for everyone! They all looked so cute up there!

We went this pic to Ryan and told him Casen was sleeping here for the night.

We hit 55,555 miles on our trip! Crazy how quick the miles build!

I am very thankful we survived the 9.5 hr drive home! There were some CRAZY rain storms on our way... most cars were pulled over but I just couldn't stop. Casen was ready to get out about 30 minutes into the trip :) We stopped for subway and the kids loved eating there sandwiches on the drive. Mars is so big. Sad.

We stopped at this gas station... yes it was real. Seriously could not believe it was still is use!