Double Dose of the Country Life

Here is GraceAnne riding English style on Cody. It is apparently the harder style, but the girl who is teaching her has never even ridden Western, so English it is! She did really good and learned how to sit correctly, hold the reins correctly, make the horse go, stop and turn. She had a total blast and we signed her up to do weekly lessons along with a once-a-week trip to the ranch to "volunteer" and groom the horses and learn about them. This fits her personality SO MUCH BETTER than dance classes. She was made for the country life. Her instructor got a big kick out of GraceAnne...as you can see there is no shade in the riding pen, so after about half-hour she said, "it's hot, I need to stop. I remember how to stop the horse, see?" and made Cody stop. We all laughed about that for a while. She's so clever!
Here is GraceAnne at our 2nd country stop this weekend, squeezing the life out of 1 of the 7 kittens she was torturing. We went to the house of some friends from church, (actually, most of our friends from church, as all the relatives live in close proximity on their mother's land), about 7 miles from Ennis in the middle of nowhere. Only in Texas can you be 7 miles out of town and in the middle of nowhere! We had a FANTASTIC time with a fire, weenies and s'mores. It was so great to just sit around and talk to people we only get to talk with briefly once a week. Florence said that we'll do this again this month and we'll have a hayride. YAY!!
Here is cat 2 of 7. They were so nice to her and didn't hardly bite or scratch. At first they struggled to get away, but after a while they just kinda gave up. Everyone asked GraceAnne if she was taking one of her friends home but she just politely declined saying, "No, we can't have a cat until we're done having babies and they're all growed up." Can you tell she's gotten this answer a few times? Specifically we told her that when our last baby is 2 or 3 years old we can get a cat. That way I don't have to change 2 creature's poops at the same time. ;)
Here is GraceAnne and her friend Chaz. She loves Chaz, as she told me this morning at Sunday School. They chase each other around, play house together and talk each others ears off. Chaz is exactly one year younger, as they share a birthday! (note: cat 3 of 7)
Violet was begging for my food. I had made chicken nuggets, peas and corn. Since she's had grits, I figured corn was safe and was squirting the corn out of the cellulose onto my finger and letting her eat it. She LOVED it. She ate more of that than she's eaten of anything, (grits was a close second!), so I guess I just have another case of the "baby hates baby-food" on my hands. GraceAnne was never a fan, either.

After all the country life this weekend I feel totally refreshed. Allan and I have talked about it a lot, and now more than ever we know we want to live out in the sticks. I'd love to be close to town, like Florence and Steven, so that it's not a hassle, but still be out enough to have cows, chickens, cats, rabbits, etc like they do, too. It was so amazing and so fun.

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Love and miss you all!