The Black Hills in South Dakota are my home away from home. A piece of my heart belongs to those Hills. My parents are from Rapid City, SD, which is the city at the base of the Black Hills. They moved to Kansas City before Kendra, my sister, or I were born for better career opportunities, but both of my sets of grandparents still lived in South Dakota. My mom’s parents built a cabin in the Hills when I was super young, so we went back to visit our grandparents and stay in the Hills at least once a year over the course of my whole life.

Several years back, my parents built a beautiful log cabin on their land in the Hills, and my sister and I have been taking our families up to visit for a week since then. We’ve been coming to the Hills for so long that we do close to no touristy things. Plus our kiddos are still a little too young to do a ton of Hills activities. We just do a lot of porch sitting and sipping coffee, board game playing, exploring nature kind of stuff, and just take it easy and enjoy family time for the week.

With how much Harrison is moving these days, he seems to rarely sit still for a picture. I’ve added a Highlight on my Instagram of all of my favorite videos and memories from the trip – including maybe my all time favorite video of Harrison going down a slide. It’s the biggest cheesiest cutest grin in the entire world.

I’ll list below any of the places that we went that you may also want to visit during a future trip to the Hills, but for the most part, this is going to be a whole heap of pictures of Harrison and Everly. 🙂

(Also: all of the really amazing high quality pictures are courtesy of my brother-in-law, Spencer)

Kendra and I unintentionally dressed alike several times during this trip…maybe we’re related?

Hugs from my two favorite little people. Love them. After an eleven hour drive to the Hills, we spent our first evening just hanging around the cabin, grabbed some pizzas for dinner, and laughing about how excited Evie and Harrison were to be playing together with their Mimi and Papa.

After the babies went down, the adults hung out on the deck while Spencer took this gorgeous picture of the Milky Way:

Our first full day in the Hills, we headed back into town to Rapid City to go to Storybook Island. Kendra and I grew up going to Storybook Island, which is just a big playground for the kiddos with storybook characters. It’s such a strange feeling to see something you remember as a kid, and going back to as an adult watching your baby enjoy the same things.

Somewhere in a photo album in my parents’ house, there are many photos of Kendra and I in this same spot from YEARS ago. Had to snap one of Harrison’s first trip.

And this sweet sign – a reminder to stay present. 🙂

Even ELMO was there! And Harrison was pumped! Evie looks so big in this picture!

The evening was spent at my parents’ cabin, eating good food, playing in the garden, and feeding the deer.

Day 2, we did some hanging around the cabin in the morning, and a walk on my parents’ land down to the meadow, and checking out Papa’s bridge and creek.

During naptime, the parents got a way for a fun adventure taking the offroads through the Hills.

Visited the lake that Kendra and I camped at during our childhood:

Dressed alike again…

And then hurried back to relieve Mimi and Papa, and eat dinner at my parents’ house.

I’ll blog the rest of our trip next week!