This last week, we saddled up the Arab, Blue, a few times and led the younger kids around in the pasture. Today, however, we saddled up Frosty AND Blue and took them to the neighbor's arena to work them. The sixteen year old girl that lives there rode both of them first, and then Marin, Dayton and even KEVIN rode Frosty! He was great and only half-groaned when Kevin hopped on - what a good boy! (One might expect a heck of a groan when a rider the size of Kev hops on! He's the right size horse for my XL size husband and I was very proud of Kev for being fearless, unlike moi...) Blue was a little bit full of it, to start, but then had her head in the game and was a good girl. I STILL suffer from post-leg-breaking trauma and will have to ease myself back into the riding... maybe when I'm more confident that these horses know their place in the pecking order of our family.
I spent the day doing laundry and dishes, which seem to be reproducing all on their own. Of course, I know that they aren't, and that I simply have five kids. However, it really does seem like they multiply during the night.
I'll tell you what IS multiplying daily, though, and that is the weeds in my yard. These are not just your everyday broadleaf variety weeds... our weeds are sticker weeds and we must have a half million of them. In fact, in some areas of our property, there are more stickers than there is grass. Bummer... Time to spray the yard and hope for the best. If anyone is interested in cultivating stickers (bullthorns, too), just give me a buzz and we'll be sure to save you some for transplanting. They are a great deterrent to those neighbor kids who like to hang out in your yard and are motivation for your youngest kids to wear shoes.
Sticker weeds are just about as popular as mosquitoes, ticks, and poison ivy, all of which prompt the question from our kids of, "Why did Heavenly Father make _______, anyway?" and in the case of the mosquitoes, "Couldn't the birds and spiders just eat some other kind of bug that didn't bite and itch so bad?" Kevin usually says that he can think of no reason for their existence, except to be a pain in the rear, and I agree... at least with the pain in the rear part. My kids, no doubt, get sick of hearing me say that it's all explained in the scripture from 2 Nephi 2:11, "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things." That's when I get the "whatever" look from most of my kids and a "good try" smile from Kevin. I'll try to keep that in mind for MYSELF the next time I have to pull a tick off my leg, slap that dang mosquito, or somehow extract the stickers from my shoelaces and hems of my pants. ;P
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