Trail Riding at Brushy Creek!!

And we are off on our very 1st trail ride with our new horse trailer. This weekend we headed up to Brushy Creek (about 30 min north of our house). We met some friends we hang out with on our vacation in Missouri and some of our trail riding club folks as well.

The boys entertained themselves with the playground equipment, fishing, going to the beach to swim and riding the mules and donkey!

Hunter rode Saturday all by himself, he was also trotting and loping on his donkey and just having an awesome time. He did the water crossings all by himself, we were pretty proud. He even had Gunnar cheering him on all the way. Gunnar rode on Carly with mom and Daddy rode Chloe and we didn't see them much, they socialized while mom and Hunter hung back and had fun of our own. Here is a pic of Hunter on the trail!

Beaming from ear to ear is how he was most of the day!!


All in all the trial run of the new trailer went well. We are looking forward to next weekend!! 4th of July!!! Woo hoo. With that comes Hunter's last ball game of the year. Boo hoo (can you feel how sad I am on this one?? ha ha). And then after the 4th weekend Hunter gets to go to Mini-Camp. I will drop him off Wednesday and pick him up Saturday. He is super pumped!! Until then!!!

IPTV kids day at the ZOO!!!

This weekend brought us a trip to the zoo to see all of the public television friends.

Up early to a 9 am baseball game on Saturday morning, leaves us with a full uninterrupted day!! YEAY!!!

After the game we headed to Des Moines and grabbed a bite to eat at Applebees, then off to the zoo for some fun times.

We hit up the rainforest, checked out the flamingoes and then snuck in a story time with Dan Wardell from IPTV kids club. The boys waited patiently and then got their picture with none other than.......

Yep!! You guessed it, the Cat in the Hat!!! How exciting!!! We then moved on to the dinosaur exhibit they have. Gunnar wanted NOTHING to do with this, he opted to stay outside and dig up bones in the sandbox and run through the dino maze with Baba while Hunter and Mom checked out the dinos and got this sweet pic!!

So Hunter and I decided to go nuts in the gift shop at the dino exhibit. We bought glow in the dark dino rings, a plush T-Rex, we grabbed Gunnar a biting T-rex, and I grabbed a couple of volcanoes that erupt when they are put in water and a dino grows out of them. Awesome!! (they have been pretty excited about watching their dinosaurs grow everyday, they are getting really big!!). Then off to the train we went via the giraffes, tiger, lion and sweet huge catepillar. Check it out!

Well we made it to the train, and didn't even have to stand in line. This was a first. We even got to sit in the boy's favorite spot on the train all the way in the back on the reverse seat! WOW!! Here is an awesome picture of them and their Baba on the train with them!!

After all the excitement of riding on that long train ride (about 5 minutes long) we headed over to the farm part of the zoo and the playground (which is of course the hot spot). We stopped so the boys could get a drink. See pic.

Over at the play ground we played for the rest of our time at the zoo until they closed and kicked us out. Here are some random pics of the boys playing on the equipment. I think this is one of the best aspects of this zoo. Fun times.

We snuck in a peek at the otters on the way out and drove home while everyone crashed out!!

The next day was Father's day. We celebrated at Applebee's (we didn't let dad know we had just eaten there yesterday, it was his choice and we didn't want to ruin it) then ran a few errands, got the horse trailer packed for next weekend and then I got a kidney infection that laid me up for 4 days. Good times and Happy Father's Day to ALL the dads out there!!

Until next weekend!!

FISHING!!!

This weekend was ALL about fishing for fish to go catch fish!! Whew!!

Saturday morning we all piled in the truck and headed off to go..... fishing!! We went to a pond so the boys could catch some fish (what we like to call bait) and get used to reeling in the big ones. Here are a few pics of them and their huge fish!!

So then we ate snacks in the back of the truck, stopped for lunch and took it home, devoured it and headed off to Hunter's baseball game. When the game was over we got out the 4 wheelers and met dad down at the river.

We learned how to set diddy poles and use our fish we caught earlier in the day as bait. The kids LOVED being on the boat!! Had a blast watching us set the poles. By then it was getting late so we hoped on the 4 wheelers and headed home. Talyn (the boys favorite baby sitter) came out and watched the boys over night so we could check the lines at 9,12,3, and 6 in the morning. Needless to say we were ALL tired the next day. We did catch a few catfish and a snapping turtle. We feasted on fried catfish the next night for supper it was Yummo!!!

Until next weekend!!

ICUBS and a new BABY!!!

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. It was hot hot hot!!! and beautiful out.


As I am sure most of you have heard we had a new baby this week. Summer our paint mare had a little paint filly. The boys had gone to bed early one night this week and had wore me out. To relax I like to just go hang out at the gate and watch the timber and the animals. I was standing there for a good 20 minutes and Chris decided to do chores. He did the usual whistling for them and Summer hollered back (which is unusual). Then all of the mules including Don Key ran, I mean ran. They usually trot but all of them were at a dead run to the grain. Summer is usually the first to come to the feed bunk and tonight she was last just walking around the corner of the fence. Meanwhile I am still just head in the clouds watching when around the corner comes this beautiful little surprise!!

I was absolutely speechless, to say the least. I kept yelling for Chris but nothing would come out. Then finally I ran to the other side of the barn and was pointing. He looked up and out of his mouth came "what the hell??? How did that......??? One thought. Muck. She had been at Muck's house last year while we weaned Diesel from her. Muck has Maverick. Chris went ahead and called Muck sounding desperate for help and out came Muck. We showed Muck the new horse and asked him to explain this to us and all we got was hysterical laughter!! I'm glad someone found humor in this. It is pretty funny. She is a little cutie and now we just need to focus on giving her a name (and lots of attention)!!

Now onto our really exciting news, we finally finally finally got our new horse trailer. Chris, Gunnar and I went to go get while Grandma Jones took Hunter to his ball game on friday night. Thank you Grandma Carol. Needless to say we all love it. It will be so much fun and I hope we get many years of use out of it with the boys and trail riding!!

Saturday brought a ball game and more ball games. Hunter had his in the afternoon and did well. Then we packed up the troops and went down to Des Moines for and ICubs game. We ate at Mullets, a restaurant across the river from the ball park. Then headed out to the game. The boys had a BLAST!!! Hunter was glued to the game watching all the homeruns and all the great catches and plays. He really was taking it all in and learning which is important right now. Meanwhile dad explained the rules of Big Boy baseball and kept buying the boys treats and food!! Here are some pics of us all enjoying our night at the ball park.

Gunnar insisted on getting a picture with the slice of Casey's pizza! LOL Enjoy!

On Sunday we spent most of the morning sleeping while mom filled up the new trailer with everything out of the old trailer. Dad and Lumpy built shelves in the work trailer. When the boys got up it was so hot they wanted to immediately get out the slip n slide to play on. Although give them a 50 cent sprinkler from a garage sale and they will entertain themselves for hours. We had a visit from Chris's Grandma Audrey and her sister Carita and Carita's daughter Kim for a little while that afternoon. It was nice to see them again. They are all looking great!! Here are some pics of the boys enjoying the heat and cooling off!!

Well until next weekend. Sounds like we are going fishing with the boys and a ball game, heading to the Furman Aquatic Center on Sunday and perhaps take in a rodeo if we have time. Have a great week everyone!!