Christmas at Backbone State Park

This year, for my extended families Christmas get-together we rented cabins at a Backbone State Park in Iowa. Since both my sister Sarah and I have larger families it's become a bit cramped to host all of us in one house. This ended up being the perfect solution. The park was about midway between everyone's respective locations so the drive wasn't too bad. The park was beautiful and we were pleasantly surprised by the cabins. They were pretty inexpensive to rent so it was nice to find them bigger than we expected. They were clean and the furniture was comfortable; we really couldn't of asked for a better place to stay.

I should of taken more pictures of the cabin, but I didn't really think about until we got home. I did, however, make sure to get some pictures of all the cousins.

My oldest niece is the sweetest...I hope my kids are the same way when they are teenagers.

Jeremy and I would not have probably given in to the Hatchimal craze, but I guess that's what aunts are for. Little Lady was on cloud nine and the rest of us were pretty mesmerized too.

These faces 💗😁

Everyone else was pretty pleased with their gifts too. It was a simple time, but we had a lot of fun of taking hikes together, playing games, and enjoying good food.

↑ Can you see the resemblance between my sister Sarah, my mom, and I. When we were kids Sarah was called Rachel all the time; now when I return to our hometown everyone assumes I'm her.

Our favorite part of the having Christmas at Backbone was getting to explore the trails. We went out a couple times with my family and then stayed after checkout of one more hike.

If you live Iowa, I highly recommended checking out Backbone. We already have plans to go back and are hoping sometime we can check it out in the summer and try out the beach.

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