Horses!

On Saturday, Cindy and I planned to take Juildeen horseback riding.  Cindy has never been on a horse before, and neither has Juildeen.  Juildeen has a fascination with horses (well, at least the noises they make - she loooooooves making animal noises, and the horse is her favorite!), so I thought the timing would be good.

Well, I found a place that does horseback rides through the mountainy desert in the Superstition Mountains, and I thought that sounded cool, so I made the appointment.  On our way, we stopped to buy carrots and apples for the horses.  When I tried to check in, the guy asked if I was Juildeen's mom or whether Cindy was.  Turns out they need her legal guardian to sign all sorts of paperwork and I was sad.  But there were lots of horses in their fenced-in areas and the guy (Juildeen called everyone there "cowboy" because they were muddy and wore cowboy hats!) told us we could pet them and feed them.  So we did and we had a great time!  

Here we are, getting excited!

And here is Juildeen, learning how to feed a horse with a flat hand.

Juildeen with a pretty horse.

Cindy getting some love.  It was in the 40s that morning, so we were quite chilly!

Juildeen was tentative about letting the horse have full access to her hand and dropped the carrots and apples often.

 Our favorite horse had a little difficulty with his tongue . . . he couldn't keep it in his mouth!  He dropped the apple we gave him three times.  I'm wondering if maybe he didn't have good teeth or something.  We let him suck on the apple for a while, and then when he dropped it the third time, we fed it to other horses.

Isn't he cute, though, with his sweet pink tongue sticking out?

Here's a video of him dropping the apple and Juildeen encouraging him to, "Try again, horse!"

Here are some more videos of feeding the horses


Listen to what Juildeen says at the beginning of this video It's priceless!  I hope the "cowboys" heard and got a laugh!


That statement reminds me of a story my parents told me about when I was 3.  We were moving back to Minnesota from Texas, where I was born, and I had seen baby pigs on Seseme Street and thought they were the cutest thing (besides cats, of course!)  So I told daddy I wanted one.  He told me we would see.  But it turns out his uncle raised pigs, and when I found that out, I couldn't wait to go visit the baby pigs.  But as soon as we got out of the car, I said, "WHAT is that SMELL?!" and when they told me it was the pigs, I said, "I don't want a pig."

And here is a story about the kittens . . . in the foreground is a blue sparkle ball.  In the background are the remnants of a pink sparkle ball that got the kitten treatment!  They tear the ball into teeny little shreds!  I can't believe this is kitten safe . . . we have removed similar balls from our toy basket.

And check this out!  We have a kitten who plays fetch!


Happy almost-Friday!

-Christie