Monday, November 19, 2012

Swimming Farm Style

My mom called and said her neighbors were flood irrigating and asked if I wanted to expose my city kids to a bit of "country life swimming".

And there off! A little bit of water is a WHOLE lot of fun for kiddos.

Ahhhh!  This is the life.  Doing the backstroke in the ditch.


Oh the mud!
It's good for the skin right?!
Mud is just the best time ever!

Not to worry. A little dip in the ditch and they came out good as new.
Ahhhh....the country life. I miss that sometimes.

AUGUST

Camera fun and picnic down by the river on a hot August afternoon.



I seriously have some cute kids.  I'm just saying...

Yes, I know this is blurry.  One of the kids took it from up in the tree.  But I like that it captures us enjoying each other.

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Alyssa Starts English Lessons

 Alyssa has been begging and begging and begging to take riding lessons.  I kind of thought it was something that would go away eventually, but it just didn't.  Finally she walked up to me with cash in hand and said, "I'm paying for my first lesson on my own. Now will you please set something up?"
So, I guess she was serious about it.
 We checked out a couple of different arenas and teachers, and Alyssa watched a few lessons before we decided to go with Mallory for our instructor.  Alyssa was in love the very second she got on a horse. She is quite a natural at it and I love to watch her.  Although, it kills me at times because I want to hop right on too.
I love that she not only enjoys it, but also gets a great work out from it too.  Mallory makes her do all sorts of crazy exercises, i.e sit ups by laying her head all the way down on the horse's rump and back up again, bicycle legs around the horse's neck, posting trot without stirrups, etc. She also has to do some work at the stable.  She has to groom the horses and clean up after them. It's a great thing all around.

JULY


We always look forward to celebrating the Ward's July birthdays at Ross Park. So fun to go swimming with cousins.  And the weather this year was perfect!  Not too hot, and not to cold, just gorgeous. My skin appreciates its annual dose of Vitamin D every July.

Other June Happenings

A few of the other note worthy things that happened in June were:

Carter's BYU soccer camp.  He and Jarom spent a week in Provo together while Carter attended soccer camp daily.  He LOVED it.
They visited the Murdochs one night and hiked up the mountain to the Y.  That's quite the hike, but these boys did it like champs.

A visit to my Dad's coworkers home, to meet Vice the mini horse. What a funny little guy he is. He thinks he's a stallion and has an attitude, but my kids LOVED him. The best part of the night was Kate taking him for a walk, and Vice deciding he wanted to go his own way. Boy, he didn't know who he was taking on. Kate might be tiny, but she is sassy. She dug in her heels and hung on to the rope with all her might. He pulled as hard as he could and she practically went skiing across the field, but there was no way she was going to give in to Mr. Vice. My kids have been begging to go back and visit ever since this day.
Aunt Mimi and Bryon made a quick visit from Washington. They surprised us all with their new baby Hank. Since they had to unexpectedly put their beloved Trigger down a short while ago, they decided to fill the gap with little Hank. We all fell in love with him. Puppies are seriously the cutest!

And last but not least...we painted some bedrooms. Kate's room is so fun with the Robbin Egg Blue color on the wall. When asked if she likes her room she says, "Better than better!" Alyssa's room also got new paint. We tried a greenish color and it was HORRID. The basement lighting really plays on colors, so we had to repaint it and went with an aqua blue. Much better! I still have Halle's and Carter's rooms to go...but the repainting of Alyssa's wore me right out. I'm gonna need a while.