B&B &L&D

For Memorial Day I drove the girls and the dog up to my folk's house, 80 miles north. It is one of my very favorite escapes. In many ways I get to crawl back into the lovely childhood lack of responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, and Hubby helps out a lot with them, but at Grandma and Papa's house, it seems I do about 1/4 of the work. I am a slob and I let my mother do most everything, including half or more of the responsibility for my kids, I do about a third, and my dad picks up the rest. It is a lovely vacation for me.

The dog stays down the road a couple of miles away with his doggie cousins at my sister's, since dogs are less than totally welcome at my folks'. My sister's husband was working a lot of the weekend, so she hung out with us quite a bit. She took the girls horseback riding, or rather, the girls rode on the back of one horse while someone else led it around the pasture, either from another horse or on foot. The girls took turns being in front, or being by themselves on the horse for nearly an hour and a half.


In the movie, the girl on the horse in front is one of our favorite babysitters, her mother is my sister's friend who keeps my sister's two horses in her pasture during the summer.

The horseback riding is really Thing 2's treat. The first two days we were up there it rained, and she was pretty upset. Every time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds for just a minute she was trying to stir up a trip out to the pasture. She is the one who talks about being a "Horseback Rider" when she grows up. Thing 1 is much less enthusiastic about the horses. All the way out to the pasture, Thing 1 kept asking, "Do I HAVE to ride a horse?" But once we started, Thing 1 was the most excited about it, and the most exuberant. She kept hollering "This is So Much Fun!" And of course the dog had a great time running around the pasture with my sister's dogs. Fun for Everyone!