This continues a series of events known as a weekend in my life... Part one is here.
So after a long Saturday, we hit the sack for a good 6 hours of sleep before waking up and hitting a Sunday running. We've lined up some teenage friends to come home with us after church to ride horses for the afternoon, so it's going to be a full day.
First things first. We need 2 cars. Between my family, Adam, and the kids coming home with us, there will be seven of us. I'd be fine stuffing all the guys in the back of the truck, but alas... that's not happening (now that I think of it, did I even bring it up?) So Adam's going to drive my car in so he can bring the teens back to the house after church. He comes and leaves a little early, since he claims he actually drives the speed limit (good 17 year old). 5 minutes after he leaves, though, the phone rings. It's Adam. "I think I'm out of gas." Greeeeeat. Let the ADVENTURE continue! We rush around to get out the door with a can of gas I had in the barn, and set out to find him. Once we get there, I tell Erin to go on ahead. We give her Adam';s phone, since she forgot hers, so that we can call her if we need her to come back.
Glug, Glug, Glug... this has GOT to be the slowest gas can ever. It takes us about 5 minutes to get a couple gallons out of it, but because the car is sitting at an angle on the side of the road, it's not picking it up. So we decide to call Erin, have her come back, and we'll deal with the car later on. And then we discover, I left my phone in the SUV. So she has my phone, and Adam's phone, and we have no phone. Lovely. We flag down this old lady, make her late for church, and call Erin to have her come back and pick us up.
While we're waiting, we put some more gas in the car, and eventually get it started. Now we can't call Erin back, though, to tell her to go ahead and turn around again and head back to churh... again. So we'll have to flag her down as we pass her, or hope she "gets it" when she gets back to where the car was and it's not there anymore. All works out, and we're only 15 minutes late to Sunday School, which, for us, really isn't that late. Adventure 1 down, what else is to come on this fine day?
After church, we head to Arby's for lunch. Uneventful event, although I am fine tuning the story from last night as I've shared it at least 3 times by now. Adam's gotta get gas, and he's taking Sean and the girls (Tabi and Katie) to the house, so he heads out ahead of us so he can get that done. We pass him anyways. I find out later on that Adam did a bit of speeding due to some peer pressure (or so he says) on the way home. Oh well, we tried.
Now, it's on to the real adventure. Horseback riding. Sean hasn't ridden here before, Tabi and Katie are rearing to go again - they were here about a month ago. So we get Jack and Alpine brushed and tacked up, and away we go... to the back yard, that is. Lots of good stuff, but all in all, a few highlights:
- You can't really make a horse do anything. Sure, you've got a bit of control over his mouth. But comeon, if he wants you off, you're off. Horseback riding is so much more about convincing the horse to do what you want than making him do it. A lesson we saw put into action several times between all 4 of us who rode. You can't make him back up. You can't make him jump over a log. You can't make him stop taking a pitstop at the barn after every lap. But you can convince him. How? Talking, touching, speaking his language... convincing him. Tabi and I talked about this a good bit. It's come back up several times since.
- Don't ride with a cell phone in your pocket (Katie!) :) I do this too, but we experience Sunday how long it can take to really search a 2 acre plot of grass (short and tall), dirt, and horse poop. You've gotta go over every spot about 3 times apparently, because it finally turned up in a spot I know we'd already looked.
- Sean is AWESOME! He set out with a goal to get the horse ("make him," in his words) to do something. Not really too big of a thing, but just something, like backing up. And he stuck with it. He got it done. And that's exactly how it's done.
So that was most of the afternoon, from my recollection, at least. Good times. We're enjoying having the teens over, and it was nice to have a little different group this time. Erin and I are working on some ideas to make this a bit more regular and fun.
Oh, oh oh... on the way back into town for the teens 5PM youth meeting, I let Katie drive. Until we got about a half mile down the road and I was informed she didn't have her license on her. So then Tabi takes over.. Learner permit driver, lovely. :) Quite a ride... but not bad, Tabi.
So that's the end of the stories from this weekend.
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