Cold Season

Homeschooling: One of the things that has been a true blessing with homeschooling is germs. Or I guess I should say the lack of germs. We used to bring home tons of bugs from school and spread them around the family like soft butter. There was hardly a week in school year that SOMEONE didn't have a runny nose or sore throat. Over the past 18 months we've had so few colds floating around our house that I was positively shocked when Equestrian Girl announced she had a sore throat yesterday! What?!?! How dare she? But on hind sight what I thought was just another flare up of his allergies in Motorcross Boy was quite likely a cold several days ago. I'm gargling my Listerine like crazy and hoping that it doesn't hit me before the show this weekend. No doubt Equestrian Girl will be mostly over it by then.

I had to haul out the big guns today and put a very robust parental controls software on Motocross Boy's laptop. Sigh.

Horses: Stanley is such a good boy. He had been brought in from the pasture just before we got there. He knew dinner was slated to be delivered any minute and did in fact begin to be served just as we tied him up. All his friends were getting their grain when he had to get saddled and taken into the arena to ride. In spite of that supreme disappointment, he was as good as gold for Equestrian Girl as always. Last night they practiced a pattern that included a lope, stop, pivot on the haunches. All three require a pretty firm application of the spurs and Equestrian Girl was hitting those buttons pretty close together. Poor Stanley just got confused. "Do I stop, lope, or turn?" We had to back off and do each independently and then slowly start combining the three with distinct pauses between each cue. Stanley figured it out right away and Equestrian Girl was close behind. They tried it again tonight and nailed it the first time!! They are soooo ready for this show!!

Motocross: Scott asked me to send him some of the 300 pictures I took last weekend. I told him to write down which ones he wanted...he narrowed it down to EIGHTY-EIGHT!! Maybe I'll just delete the rest. If I take 400 pictures at every event I'll blow up my computer.