Tyler's first riding lesson!

Today our wonderful neighbor, Judi, who has 3 beautiful horses, gave my daughter Tyler a horse riding lesson. It was her first time! She had so much fun and she did so great! She even did some trotting and some cantering and learned to change from one to the other and back to walking. I have such a great neighbor! Check out the videos below!

Workin with Willa

Ok, so we have an 8 year old Mustang mare. She was given to us last year and we have slowly been getting to know her. Lately I've been working with her a bit, after my neighbor loaned me some Pat Parelli DVDs and have been amazed at how smart she is and how quickly she picks up on things. Last week she had an accident with some fencing and got a couple cuts. I bought some wound spray and some fly spray (to keep flies off the owies). Now, Willa (short for Willamina) does NOT like being sprayed with anything. I discovered this when we tried to spray her last year to keep flies off her. So, having to get the wound spray up close enough to coat the cuts was, well.. not easy. It took both Mike and I to hold her and get her sprayed. She was NOT happy with us, and since then has been pretty distrustful. She loves apples, but was very hesitant this past week when I would offer them. So, today I took a folding chair and a book out to her pasture, sat down and started reading. Within minutes she was right there lipping my coat and chewing on the arm of the chair. Eventually I was able to reach up and scratch her head. After awhile I walked out of the pasture and closed her gate. She came right over, reached over and started lipping my shoulder and whatnot. The brush was right at my feet so I picked it up, let her sniff it and she let me slowly start brushing her. It was nice. Im excited to build that trust with her again and get to where I can start working with her and playing games. My neighbor brought over more dvds for me to watch, and Im learning so much! Willa's wounds are healing well, and I hope to someday be able to ride her confidently! I will post more as we make more progress.

Baptism weekend pictures

Ok, so I stole the pictures from Mallory's blogpage but they were so good! In the photos are Brent and Mallory (my baby brother and his wife) with William, there's one with my mom and my daughter, Tyler, and Brent and Mallory on my back porch with a nice background of our fabulous view, and Mallory being entertained by our 4 little lambs.

William's Baptism

William was baptized Saturday May 1st. Mike baptized him and his grandpa, Doug, did the confirmation. It was a great evening! Huntley (his 10 year old sister) got up to the microphone in front of a FULL chapel and sang 'When I am Baptized'. It was perfect. She did wonderfully. Everyone had watery eyes, and some of us were outright crying. It was just amazing! Their dad who lives in Hawaii came out for the week to visit the kids, and also signed papers to allow my husband, Mike, to adopt William, Huntley and Tyler. We are all so excited about this! Anyway, my parents, Ryan's parents, and Mike's parents (yes thats 6 grandparents) all came, as well as his Aunt Christina (my brothers wife) and her 2 boys, his Aunt Kristin (dad's sister) and my brother Brent and his wife Mallory. Brent gave a talk about baptism, which he just thought up while he was up there, and it was excellent! Also, Mike's cousin, Tommy and his boy were there, as well as several people from our ward. It was a great day! I will add pictures when I get them off the camera.

Pine Wood Derby

William and Mike made a derby car in an hour (still adjusting it as we ran out the door!). The car was.. well, it wasnt pretty, and we didnt expect to do well at all, especially given how many cars there were! But William won 2nd place! According to William, it was 'The best day ever!'

Mitsu

Mitsu is the kitty we kept from our last litter of kittens. He has 3 little spots on his head, and Mitsu means 3 in Japanese, hence the name. He's a cute little turd! We just adore him. The picture is of my dad with Mitsu sleeping on his belly. The other picture is Mitsu and his mommy Snickers.

Oh what a joyous Scouting adventure...

Ok, so if you didnt know, Im involved with cub scouts (its a calling in my church, I could hardly refuse) and I would rather do ANYTHING else.. but oh well. So, my boys are all 11 years old. Today we worked on the outdoorsman badges. We took the boys for a 3 mile hike, then went to the other leaders house, since she had a large sandy driveway and lots of branches and wood. All 12 boys (yes, I said 12) had to gather their firewood, and build a small fire with bricks around it, to hold a frying pan. Once they had a good little fire going (lets not even GET into that) they got to take their frying pan and cook eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns and pancakes. It was quite an exhausting 3.5 hours. The smoke was... smokey. I spent a lot of time just making sure the boys didnt burn anything they werent supposed to. Yeah, and thats just about all Im going to say about that.