Lovely Labor Day Weekend

We started off our Labor Day weekend a bit early with a visit on Thursday night from Katie, Mark and Rodney (Ryan's sister and fam) who graciously came to stay with our kids so we could enjoy a late night out on the town to see this...
It was absolutely FABULOUS!!!

We got to spend all day Friday with our family--it was great to see them. The kids loved trying out Mark's ride.

On Saturday we took the kids on a 19 mile bike ride. Nope, that was not a typo. NINETEEN miles!! We had so much fun!! We stopped along the way at a fun park for a picnic lunch and then kept on and went to the Aurora Reservoir--and all the way around it. We took another break to let the kids play down on the beach. I didn't bring the real camera because it's a bit big to carry on a long ride, but we did have the camera phone with us to capture a few fun moments on the beach.

I was sooooo proud of my kids!! They did AWESOME!! There was one unfortunate incident where Chloe cut directly in front of me, causing me to crash into her and causing Lincoln to fall (with the bike) to the ground, but other than that all was great. Lincoln (who rides in the bike seat) kept telling us how good he was at hills and what a great bike rider he is. :) We ended that night with a hot dog roast in the backyard and a celebratory trip to Golden Spoon.

Unfortunately everyone woke up the next morning looking a little worse for the wear. Apparently I am the only one in the family that knows how to correctly apply sunscreen...

Oops.

On Sunday night we had more family fun--we got to see most of our Colorado family and Jeff, Stephaney and Liam who came over to visit from Utah. We had a fun BBQ and a really fun Justin Bieber dance party. Monday morning was spent showing off our fabulous part of Colorado to Jeff and Stephaney and hopefully convincing them that they need to move here. (Two words: Charming Charlie's.) After lunch at Five Guys, we parted ways with them and headed up to Eldorado State Park for an afternoon hike.


We hiked to the ruins of an old luxury hotel that burnt down in 1912. It was cool to see all the artifacts that people had collected and left on the fireplace--we found a few of our own to add to the collection.

(Notice Chloe is carrying her shoes and hiking in her socks. That's the way we roll.)

We also hiked along the river. This is one part of the state we would love to explore some more--there were even some hot springs up there we didn't even know existed!