The 4th of July Celebration

Our celebration started quite early, 1:40 am to be exact with the birth of Jewel's filly by Evan. Vaulting practice started at 10:00 am. Around 11:00 am I headed up to the barn to iodine the umbilical cord on the new filly and saw Karin had Missy and Cookie in the round pen. There were a lot of kids around and Karin's rule goes, "if you can catch Missy and Cookie, bridle her, mount her all by yourself you can take them out for a trail ride. Well Noah and Shaeya were determined today to accomplish that and did.

 Above is Noah riding Missy and below is Shaeya riding Cookie. 

 They were more than willing to let Tekoa and Wren take a ride on the horses before they took them out on the trails.

 Above they are heading out to the trails and below they are on their way home after a successful ride. A successful ride is one where no one falls off and has to walk home. You see Karin makes them learn bareback and if a child falls off there is no one to help get them back on. It WORKS, that's the way we learned! These kids stick like glue. It also gives them the best instruction about not going faster than ones balance. 

Once the horses were put away the kids came in to see the new foals.

 The 2 pictures above are of Marika's colt by Valiant and the 2 pictures below are of Jewel's filly by Evan. These foals are so very friendly, they would walk right out of the stall into the crowd of kids if we let them.

From the stalls we headed over to the lake where the crowd was gathering for volleyball. The golf cart was  parked next to the trampoline so the kids could jump from the roof and get a big bounce. 

 Joan was weeding the edge of the volley ball court so Braelyn, Taegan and Israel joined in to help. Not sure how much they actually did but have proof they pulled some of the weeds.

 Israel joined his parent when he got tired of pulling weeds. 

 Braelyn got distracted by a beautiful orange grasshopper. 

  It didn't take long for Israel to find the volley ball. 

 Jessica brought her pug puppy out to play with mom's remaining puppy. They played so cute together. 

 Taegan, Braelyn and Kensley put Studly on a leash and tried to take him for a walk. Studly ended up taking them for the walk. 

 Ava loves all dogs and Emma loves attention.

 There were 3 teams of volley ball players, the games were fast furious and very entertaining. The volleys were amazing. 

To see the rest of the pictures click HERE. We joined our food for dinner and ended up with a pretty nice meal. Joan picked lettuce, broccoli, peppers and tomatoes from her garden and added sunflower seeds and shredded cheese to provide a huge colorful filling salad which really hit the spot. Mom provided her home made poppy seed dressing,  meat balls with noodles in an Italian red sauce served with hard rolls, and I had some roast beef, honey ham, turkey, cheese and rolls. After dinner the horse shoe game was played and only after the game did we discover mom had pounded in the stakes 4 feet too long. Instead of 40 feet it was 44 feet. Those stakes were moved but we decided we would need Mark to build a sand pit for each of them, the hard ground made the horse shoes bounce and roll so hard they were hitting and bouncing off mom's propane tank and for some reason she didn't think that was wise. The kids all took off to watch the fireworks in Elmwood, IL but because I was up most of the night Mark and I decided to skip the fireworks and have an early night.