later summer getaways

This summer we didn't go away on a vacation as a family, but we did take a few day trips in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

The Montshire Museum of Science is worth a trip, even with older children.  There are tons of fun indoor exhibits with math challenges, giant bubbles, magnets, ant and bee colonies, but there is also an outdoor water park and fun walking trails.

If you ask the children about their favorite part, they would probably say that they loved to play in the water. But my favorite was walking the trails to the Connecticut River, picking up acorns, listening to the bird calls and telling stories.  It seems that in our family we like to make up stories.  If we see something along the trail that we wonder about, we all make up a story of what might have happened.  Often these little tales turn out to be a lot more interesting and fun than the actual facts behind the phenomena.  We get silly with the stories, and making them up connects us in so many different ways.  I also love how each one of us comes to it differently.  Often one of us will ask a question, then a hypothesis is added by Zany.  Usually Elvin will add details about a similar occurrence in a novel she's read, and from there the story takes off, among many giggles and occasional disagreements over details.  To this day my children recall a walk around a lake many years ago where we found a mushroom covered log and turned it into a restaurant, with fairies flitting around serving sorrel salad and dewdrop tea.  The children may not have learned anything about the mushrooms or the forest that day, but they deeply care about wild places where magical things just may occur.

Of course summer break is not complete unless we go to the beach.  And as always, we left that day thinking we should have done it sooner and more often.  As someone who really struggles to let everything go, it was so therapeutic to sit under an umbrella to read and nap, watch the children play in the (way too cold) water, go for walks, watch the wildlife and eat yummy sandwiches brought from home.  Oh, yes, we will be doing that again next summer, and more than once!  There's nothing more restorative than feeling the sand between your toes, watching and listening to the seabirds, seals and boats, walking among the sea grass and hopping over waves. Then at the end of the day, we all piled into the car tired and happy, and someone remarked how we would be coming back next year.  And in that promise lay all the acceptance that summer must come to an end and we are just a few short weeks away from short days, fires in the stove and lots of warm layers.

her riding adventures

Zany is the official animal lover in our house.  Elvin tolerates them, the Man and I take care of them or ensure the kids take care of them, but Zany wants them all sleeping in her bed and really, truly, deeply loves them.  Which doesn't always translate into her taking care of them, ahem, but love is like that sometimes.

You can imagine how happy Zany has been to live right next door to beautiful horses.  Sometimes when their owner has to go away, we take care of them.  Zany is very proud that she knows how to feed these big beauties, though so far her interest in mucking out has lagged behind considerably....

This spring we finally were able to begin regular riding lessons for her, and she has made impressive progress in fairly little time.  And then, last week, she got to go to camp for three days.  Two hours of daily riding were included, as well as lessons on grooming and care taking.  Then, on Sunday there was a horse show at the barn with competitive classes ranging from equitation to sack races.

We drove through misty morning hillsides to arrive at the barn early.  Zany got right to work with mucking out (yes, indeed), grooming and tacking up her little sweet pony with the help of her six-year old partner.

She participated in horsemanship, equitation, pair riding, poles on the ground and sack racing and came away with two first and two third prizes.  She also came in sixth (out of seven) in stable management points from camp, harking back to this lack of enthusiasm for shoveling poop.  No big surprise on that front, cleaning stables is a lot less rewarding than riding itself.  The show was a fantastic experience for her as a first competition.  She watched others struggle and laugh off horse misbehavior, kept her composure when her horse became nervous and stopped obeying her, won a few ribbons and had a lot of fun. I mean, sack racing?  How could anyone do that and not have fun?

And yet. It speaks volumes about this girl of ours that her favorite activity of the day did not offer ribbons.  She has fallen in love with the challenge of vaulting, or essentially doing acrobatics on a horse.  She now is thinking of taking vaulting lessons, because what could be more fun than sitting on a moving horse?  Well, moving on a moving horse, of course!