Tuesday, October 6, 2009

What I did on my summer vacation Part 1

I have made it a yearly tradition to take the kids on a month-ish long vacation during the summer. Dh joins us when he can. Mostly we visit Utah, where I grew up. Over the next few days I'll share some great photos of things we did this summer.
Part one: Ride horses. I grew up with horses and my parents still have some. This was a great trail ride with me, my mom and my dd, three horse crazy girls. These are the mountains to the southeast of my hometown. Our mounts for the day were Zoe, Pie and Candy.
Then my mom and I got this crazy idea that since the kids were riding nearly every day and doing so well, we could enter them in the youth horseshow at the county fair. We excitedly turned in our registration money, found some great deals on Western clothes at DI, and started practicing. We practiced showmanship at halter, horsemanship and barrels. We didn't have any poles, but we set bottles out on the ground and had the kids run through them until they memorized the pattern. Matthew and I competed in the leadline class, where he rode and I led the horse, so I had to find some Western clothes too. Thank you again to Grandpa Clyde who brought my hat and belt to me from CA on his way back home.
This is the pole bending event. I was too busy alternating between yelling and holding my breath to take more pics. In fact, I don't have any other pics of the kids in any other events. Where is my personal photographer when I need him? It was a strange feeling to see my kids competing in the same places and with some of the same group of people that I did when I was a kid. It was a ton of fun, and I finally experienced the horse show from the mom's point of view instead of the competitor's. I appreciate all my mom did for me for all those horse shows I went to as a kid. In fact, she's still the one who got up early to feed the horse, bathe him, make sure he had good shoes, make sure the tack was in order, the trailer packed, etc. Thanks, mom, you're the best!
Registration fees: $24
Pink cowboy hat with silver sequins for dd: $3 at DI
Western shirt for ds: $3 at DI
Hamburger and soda from the snack stand: $5
Falling asleep in the truck with your trophy: priceless.

2 comments:

Lauri said...

HOw fun and what a memorable experience for your kids!

Clark Club said...

Awesome! What a great experience.