A few weeks ago, Uncle Dave and Auntie Alicia mentioned that we should come down some time in the summer to hang out at Alicia’s mom’s horse ranch. We thought that sounded like fun, but with a fairly busy schedule ahead of us this summer, we didn’t know when it was going to happen. Well, with nothing planned for last weekend, we called up Dave and were fortunate that they were free on Saturday as well so we could come on down. We made the trek down Saturday morning, ate at Space Aliens, and then arrived, in a steady rain, at Alicia’s mom’s place. We got to meet all 6 of her horses – Magic, Rio, Kitty, Parker, Tipper and the one I’m now spacing. Alicia showed us how to bring the horses into the stable, and Dave showed the girls how to clean them. Alicia brought in Kitty and Magic and we cleaned them up (and got some good pictures).
After that we watched the horses run around for a little while and learned a little more about the social structure of horses. I didn’t realize there was a definite pecking order between the horses – Kitty was the boss, and whenever she was around, all the other horses followed her. Dave then tried to “join in” a horse, which means he tries to get the horse to listen to him by following him around. It took like 10 minutes for the horse to give in, but when it finally did, it followed him everywhere – after it was running away from him for most of the 10 minutes.
After that we got to take Magic out for a test drive. Although I have a bit of an aversion to riding horses (you’ll have to see my story from a few years back on vacation near Walker, MN where I fell off a horse), I did the fatherly thing and jumped on the horse so the girls could ride along. They enjoyed that so much, they decided they were ready for their own ride. So they each got to go for a quick walk around the yard on top of the horse. They were hugely excited.
Since it had been raining all afternoon, we decided to put the horses away and come hang out inside. We had a lot of fun playing the Wii and playing some ping pong with my bro. Alicia’s step-dad was a very gracious host – he kept bringing down snacks and drinks after he lit the fire to keep us warm on such a cold day.
We went out to dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen – which was pretty fun. I had a thin Pepperoni pizza which was good, and the girls gobbled up their pizza. After dinner we went to our hotel and got some swimming in before they passed out. Actually, since Becky and the girls had taken naps on the drive back into the Cities from the ranch, they stayed awake and I think I fell asleep first in the family for the first time since the girls had been born.
One aside – the pool at our hotel had to be heated by a sun window above the pool, because it was really cold Saturday night. It was even worse on Sunday morning – I couldn’t bear to get in there. Even the hot tub was slightly colder than the average cold pool.
On Sunday morning, after our swim, we got to have brunch with Uncle Marc and Parker. It was good to catch up with them, and then we made the long trek home after a fun weekend.
On Sunday morning we did another quic
Eric's space 