Our Very Own Horse Whisperer

There is a family-owned farm not far from us. They run a farm market year-round, selling their own produce and a variety of other locally grown foods and locally produced products as well. In fact, we won’t buy corn on the cob from the grocery store anymore. We wait until we can get it fresh from the farm. They have bred their own variety of sweet corn and it is well worth the wait. We eat is as often as we can while it is in season. In addition to their produce, they run a preschool, host a yearly pumpkin patch with hayrides, sell Fresh Christmas trees in the holiday season, host a food truck event each Friday during the summer, and a number of other things. In short, they have made their farm into a lucrative business. One of the newer things they offer is a variety of farm experiences. They have seasonal experiences where patrons can come in and see what is growing in each season and what the farming looks like at different times of the year. They have ones just at strawberry harvesting time that focus on the sweet little berries. They have an experience where people can get up close and personal with their goats and see what caring for a goat would be like. And they have a similar experience with horses. 

When I got the email announcing their four-week “Life of a Horse” experience, I thought it would be a perfect fit for Malia. She had a few horse riding lessons last year, but she got bored with that pretty quickly because they didn’t move fast enough for her. After six weeks, she was just riding around in big, slow circles and she wanted more hands-on time with the horse. The local farm doesn’t focus on riding, it focuses on how horses think, their “herd behavior,” and how to care for and communicate with them.  Malia was sick last week and missed her first hour with the horses, but the teacher was amazingly accommodating and gave her two hours today to make up for the lost lesson. And Malia was in heaven. They learned how to put a halter and lead line on the horses and she had all three horses haltered in about five minutes. The instructor told Kevin that she has had adults who spent the entire hour trying to halter one horse. But apparently Malia has a really good demeanor for working with these animals because she had them eating out of the palm of her hand…literally. There was one that was following her around by the end of her time. She also learned how to clean out their hooves and how to brush them. 

When Malia got home, she was extremely happy. She had missed a birthday party to go spend time with the horses and although she had been sad about that in the morning, by the time she got home she was incredibly glad she had gone to the farm instead. She has two more weeks so spend hanging out with the horses and she is excited for next Saturday.

Eight is Great! (Part I)

Some birthdays are bigger than others. After the big numero uno, which is generally more important to the parents than the child, the first big one in our family is turning five. Five is big because that is when you are old enough to get your own library card, something all my kids looked forward to. The next big one is eight. Malia hit that number today. This one is big not only because she will be getting baptized in a couple of weeks, but because as of today, she can legally ride in the car without her booster seat. Hurrah! It’s about time! Her plan was to throw the booster on the ground ten times, run over it with the car, throw it on the ground ten more times and then throw it out. Yes, it’s kind of overkill, but seriously, she’s beyond excited to be rid of the thing.

She ended up throwing the booster on the ground about twenty times, each time hoping to break the booster, but let’s face it. The things are designed to withstand a car crash. There’s not much an eight-year-old can do to it in terms of breakage. She did manage to break one of the arms and was pleased about that. It has been a busy day full of festivities so there was time to run over the booster with the car, but she has one more that we can destroy another day. She did, however, do a happy dance after she dropped slightly dented booster in the trash.

To move on to actual birthday news, she took a treat to school to share with her class (white fudge Ding Dongs-she had one after a soccer game last month and loved it). There was a pencil and a small treat from the office, her teacher let her choose something out of their classroom treasure box, and she came home with a gift from one of her friends that was invited to her upcoming birthday party but who will be unable to attend. She came home to discover her birthday balloons, one of which was almost as tall as she is! And although it had nothing to do with her birthday, Malia loves activity days so she was happy to have an activity fall on her birthday.

Around here the birthday child always gets to choose what we eat for dinner, so Malia choose spaghetti (no surprise there) with NO MUSHROOMS. We always add mushrooms because 5/6 of us love them, but since it was her birthday, I left them out. She also wrote a note and stuck it to the fridge to make sure I remembered to give her the “You Are Special Today” plate at dinner time.

After dinner, Kevin’s parents arrived to join us for the remainder of the day’s celebration. They had a variety of small presents for Malia, things that Kev’s mom had discovered as they cleaned out her mother’s house after she passed away a few months ago. There were things like some shells from the middle east, some chopsticks purchased in Okinawa, and several tiny wind up mouse toys. As Malia took each item out of the box, my mother-in-law explained about each item. Malia was mesmerized with the whole thing.

Other presents included Lego with a horse and rider theme from Daniel, Nathan, Kevin and I, a series of books about horses, and a horse and rider toy based on an animated Netflix series that Malia binge watches. As I’m sure you can tell, she is all about the horses right now. 😊

We sang and had a simple vanilla cake with whipped cream and fresh berries. There are fancier cakes planned for later this week, but for today’s celebration, we kept it simple.

I’m very grateful Malia is in our family. Having a girl join my crew definitely changed the dynamics of our household. She is funny and witty. She is confident and clever. She is opinionated and stubborn. She is all girl, but she is tough as well. Having three older brothers has helped shape her, even though none of them understand her current fascination with horses. I just tell them it’s a girl thing. 😉