Mud

Horses: Anyone with horses knows mud is inevitable. And while it is actually starting to dry up around here, the rains of the past few weeks were bad enough to create some serious mud bogs. These pictures were taken on Saturday when we had a beautiful fall day but it was still muddy. Equestrian Girl has an elaborate method of turning Stanley back out to the big pasture while trying to stay out of the mud. You can't quite see her in the first picture as she slips through the gate leaving him on the wrong side.


Now she has to stand in just the right spot to be able to lift and open the gate wide enough for Stanley to get through while still staying out of the mud.


If you didn't think the mud looked that deep, look again. Where are Stanley's feet?


After he's turned loose Equestrian Girl tells him to walk on the paths that are dry so he stays out of the deep mud and keeps his feet clean. You can see the grassy pasture in the background but he has a ways to go to get there since there's a fence in the way.


Then Equestrian Girl has to climb back around and out without getting in the deep mud while holding posts and gates. It's pretty tricky trying to stay mud-free this time of year!


Motocross: Motocross Boy might have another racing friend soon. The Barn Owner's son had bought this little thing he called a dirt bike that was really more of a mini-bike with fat tires and a big seat. It wasn't running right so they asked Scott to fix it. To make a long story short - it's not well made and parts are not exactly readily available. So tonight the boys took Motocross Boy's 110 cc and 65 cc bikes over to the barn along withe mini-bike for Barn Boy to ride. Saying he loved it is probably an understatement.

Homeschooling: Motocross Boy was having a tough time with math this past couple of weeks so we decided it was time to go back to Aleks.com for math again. I really like Aleks math. It doesn't let him move on to the next topic until he's showing mastery and it does regular assessments to make sure they are remembering what they've learned. This week I've had him taking a series of quizzes on old material to make sure he's remembering the basics. We've had to do some one on one time to jog his memory but that's okay.

Equestrian Girl uses Aleks math too. She's about 6 topics away from finishing math for her grade for the year but she loves math so she'll just move on to the next grade. She is seriously in tune with school this week and has spent about 10 hours in two days doing the week's assignments. I think she is almost done for the week!