Ticket to Ride

The fact that I am feeling oh so behind in blogging all of our recent life happenings is a good sign!

Unfortunately we brought the cold and even snow down with us to Arizona! But we did have a couple of warm days first. (Thank goodness!) I think everyone's favourite outing was when we went horseback riding. We went to this great ranch where the kids all got to get dressed up in fun cowboy gear first, then we went on an hour long trail ride with a real cowboy as our guide. The Toddler (still need a new alias for my growing baby) stayed put with Grandma and then had a smaller ride of his own. (He wasn't so sure that we were coming back... check out his face!)

The kids were in their glory! Miss J was in heaven and loved every moment - from the dressing up, the ride, and caring and feeding her horse afterwards. She is a huge horse lover, like most little girls. The boys have no idea how little control they really had over their old-used-to-the-trail horses. Their horses were constantly stopping to eat, poop/toot or try to wander off and they just let them! At least they weren't as frightened as their first time horseback riding.

Mr. Man was given an obnoxious lazy horse who really needed a lot of prodding. One look at Mr. Man and our cowboy guide thought he'd be able to kick this stubborn hose into shape. Little did he know that Mr. Man has huge issues with animal cruelty and his idea of motivation was to become the horse whisperer and speak kind encouraging words. It didn't help that Mr. Man was way too big for his horse, and so the whole situation was quite humorous.

I also enjoyed riding, however, I admit I wished we had been permitted to go a little faster - a gallop would be nice! We weren't allowed to "budge" the other horses in our line on the trail, but my horse really wanted to and I wondered what anyone would say if I crept in front of them all and took the lead! It brought me back to my horseback riding days in Hawaii - did you know I once won a prize barrel racing? At any rate, it was an enjoyable experience and one we won't soon forget. We are grateful for grandparents who made this possible and shared it with us.