Perfect Sunday afternoon

I love to ride horses. A lot. And although I have never owned a horse, I somehow always had one to ride for about 15 years, until I got pregnant with Finn. The last horse I rode regularly was Jenny, a very well trained, gentle, bomb-proof gem of a horse. Some of my happiest horse-riding memories are galloping her across stubble fields or racing through the forest after (or before) a long day spent at my desk. Jenny is an old lady (31 now!), but still in amazingly good shape.
Last Sunday we drove out to Richard's and Kirsten's place to visit them - and Jenny. Richard owns Jenny and Kirsten has a new young horse they call Smartie. When I told Finn and Lily we were going to visit friends who have HORSES they were ecstatic.

One last practice ride on Rosalie

All decked out in boots and hats

I had secretely hoped that maybe one of my children would be a horse lover too. I think the following pictures speak for themselves! ☺
By the way, the resolution of the pictures is much better if you click on them to make them bigger.

Lily, Richard, Jenny, me

Lil' cowboy.

I wasn't sure the kids would even want to get on - after all a horse is pretty big and so far they have only sat on a small Shetland Pony. Ha!

Not only could they not wait to get on, they also wanted to go fast and didn't want to get off!

Richard and I had to take turns leading Jenny at a trot. It's tiring to jog in sand!

Do you think she enjoyed going fast?

Then it was their turn to watch

Thank you!

Little girl, big dreams.

Time permitting, I am looking forward to riding the trails with Kirsten once again! We had some fun times and adventures back in the day. And I think I might have to look into riding lessons for my little cowboy and cowgirl. They had such a blast riding and just loved being at the barn and around the horses.

Lily's fabulous flower fiesta

started with cleaning up after the copious amounts of rain we had the night before.

So while the boys were still snoring upstairs and breakfast was cooking on the stove (steel-cut oats, Grandma! ☺), Lily and I were busy emptying out the pool and tidying the yard.

(Side note: kiddie pool season has begun here, and is thoroughly enjoyed by Finn and Lily, but we wanted the pool out of the way for the party, hence the emptying out. This is a picture from Friday afternoon.)


But back to Saturday. Lily enjoyed "helping" me with the cake decorating.


As did Finn. And thus the Marshmellow Madness began. And lasted all day.


Table is set!

Cupcakes are done!

"Are my guests here yet?" - I kept hearing this from about 6:30am until 3pm, when they FINALLY FINALLY arrived.

Hard to see here, but Lily is about to blow out the candles pictured above:

And no party without Rosalie!

The kids were too excited to sit and eat for long (though they kept coming back for the candy), but others thoroughly enjoyed the cake.

Some of the activities: Throw the ball/frog in the flower pot. (After Neil put cardboard in the pots and moved them closer, the kids actually scored a few hits.)

Face painting

Painting flower wind chimes

Making thumb print flower t-shirts

Except for Finn, who ended up with a "cool shirt" (And will look like a walking commercial for Jägermeister now ☺):

Egg race

Playing pirates / knight and princesses

And sharing the booty that fell out of the pinata

It was a nice little birthday party! I know Lily and Finn really enjoyed it, and I think so did the guests. Finn was not bothered by the fact that he was the only boy at all. It helped that he sees the girls at preschool every day (except for Jana, but she is practically part of the family anyway), so they were more than happy to play "knight and princesses" with him when he brought his assorted swords and shields out to the garden. He only wished we would have made a fire, but there simply wasn't time (the party was from 3-6pm).

And after everyone had gone home Finn and Lily happily played with bubbles while Neil and I

took care of the aftermath.