Cold. It's Cold.

Horses: Yesterday afternoon Equestrian Girl and I drove up to MSU to watch a little of the Cowboy Christmas Horseshow and do a little browsing at the tack booths set up. We knew for sure one of the ladies from the barn was taking her horse up to show tomorrow in the regular classes (actually her trainer is going to be doing the showing) and we figured we were bound to know a few other people as well.

When we got out to the arena to sit down, they had just finished up the 13 and under versatility challenge for English/Western (they'd come back later to run barrels) and were excited to see a couple of girls from our old barn getting ready to go in for the 14-19 class age group. In that class was our old trainer and a horse we knew from Paint shows but we didn't know the rider. (Later we found out it was her friend riding).

The fun really started when they got ready to do the barrel racing. Most of these horses were NOT speed horses at all. In the 13 and under group one of Equestrian Girl's friends from the SPUR shows was there and did a nice slow lope/trot around the barrels - she had fun seeing her and went down to talk to her later. Our old trainer was riding a horse that wasn't at all happy about running barrels. The Paint we know turned into quite a show as his rider tried convincing him it was okay to go faster than a trot!

We had wanted to stay for the freestyle reining class but it was already 8:30 and we have an hour drive home from MSU with a big day planned for today. Another horse filled day! But it's also going to be a bundle up day. Last night driving home it was 24 degrees with a bright clear sky. This morning its.....13 degrees. It will be fun to see how our new trainer from FLORIDA handles this cold day!

Homeschooling: I recently wrote about how I feel we should embrace technology. The very next day I read about a study that shows that kids who use technology such as texting, email, blogging, and even facebook actually have better writing skills than those who don't. I'm always a little leery of such studies wondering who paid for them but in this case the study was done in England where full disclosure and restrictions are a bit stronger. It was done by a British university...

Birds & the Bees...when you homeschool you have total control over this topic to present it and teach it and explain it how you feel best. A while back we started family reading time where we went bit by bit through a birds & the bees book. I had carefully researched various books and had found two that I felt would work best for our family. After each section we talked a little bit about it and made sure both kids had understanding. And then we dropped it as a 'topic' of homeschooling. That's not to say we stopped discussing it in total - we often had either private or family discussions as things came up. A few days ago I came across the book and pulled it out thinking it might be a good time for a quick refresher. I also suspected one of the kids would see the book and take it for their own personal reading. Sure enough, last night Motocross Boy came downstairs to get some index cards and saw the book asking if he could take it upstairs to read...