Off to the Races

After the baths today, we were walking the horses to get them dry. Sarah Kelly was telling us that's what we were supposed to do (she had read all this in a book from the library). So we tried and tried and they were still quite wet. So Scott came up with the idea of races. What ensued was a race between the 2 horses with different runners. Not only do these horses need some exercise but they welcomed it. When we first started, they took off so fast that their "runners" lost the harnesses and it was clear these 2 (children and horses that is) wanted to run as fast as possible.Little Man is winning this race on the home stretch.

In this race there will be a jockey, Little Man Jack will ride Little Man the horse. Even though Little Man took off with a fast trot, Jackson held onto the withers and didn't fall off.

Coming in first again!

At the finish line (the gate) which is also the starting line.

Here we go, ready, set, run!

Go, Go, Go...

Manes are flying and tails are drying.

Heading out again; Oliver in the lead.

Sunday Afternoon Fun

Trying to get Oliver to stay in one place for his bath.

Sarah Kelly trying to keep Little Man from eating the flowers while brushing him to try and dry him off.

This is the funniest part after we were done. We were walking the horses around in the sun to dry them off and they would plop down on the driveway and roll. Drew is minus a shoe but he's trying to get Little Man up first before thinking about that. Picture One: Little Man going down.

Picture Two: Little Man going over onto his back.

Picture Three: Little Man completing his roll.

We have had some absolutely gorgeous warm weather since Monday. What a treat, at least for me. I'm the one who has most enjoyed the 80 degree+ temperatures. We've done some more neat things this week as well as stayed around the house a lot which is the children's top priority when asked what they want to do! When I get some more computer time (I'm sharing a laptop with Jeff and Scott), I'll blog and post some pictures from our week. Here though is our lazy Sunday fun.

First we went to church. Again, I cannot stress enough how fabulous this church and its minister is. Go to http://www.claytonvalleychurch.com/ for some great sermons. Today, I just knew Pastor Chris had been reading Voddie Baucham's book, Family Driven Faith. If you want to know more about Voddie, go to http://www.voddiebaucham.org/ Chris began by talking about a change they are going to make in the church. They are going to start including all children in the worship service and as he told us after church, they want to teach men how to disciple their families to build stronger families and thus create a legacy of faith among generations to follow. He cited the statistics that we've heard Voddie speak about, how 85% of "churched" teens are leaving the faith. Using gumballs and paintballs in vases, Chris visually demonstrated by pouring, how many hours we as parents have with our children, how many the church has with them, and how many total we have. This visualized the concept of what is possible when the church and family work together to pass on the faith. We are continually amazed at this wonderful spirit-filled church and how much time the people have taken to invest in our lives. We usually don't leave until 45 minutes or so after church, lots of fellowship takes place in this congregation.

This afternoon, after lunch, we all had some quiet time. Then it was outside for everyone being too pretty of a day to stay in. We decided it was a great day to wash the horses. Tio said they usually do it in the pasture but it's all dirt so we decided to do it in the front yard. He watched us and laughed quite loudly. It was quite a scene getting Oliver to stay in one spot and not run off and eat flowers. Little Man was very cooperative but neither liked me and Sarah Kelly sponging their faces. Sarah Kelly had read in a book exactly how to wash them and what tools to use so we found everything we needed and began. The funniest though somewhat frustrating thing happened when we were done. Here's the scene on the front lawn today:

Cleaning the dirt out of Little Man's feet.Little Man getting lots of attention to his dirt-brown fur.

Okay, after bathtime and the races (see another blog post), Little Man decides that he does NOT want to go back to his fenced in dirt area; he really enjoys being a lawn mower instead. Sarah Kelly does prevail though.

Relaxing in the yard with the animal lawn mower.

Daddy stayed in the house during most of this with his princess. He occasionally came out to take pictures and shake his head with laughter.
Flowers surrounding this beauty.

By early evening, we had had ice cream and started in on popcorn while we watched an outdoor movie. Patty joined us for a viewing of "Cheaper by the Dozen".

Oh, the funniest and most frustrating thing? When we finally put the horses back into the pasture, they rolled in the dirt! Now Little Man is brown again. Ugh...

Talking about the Walk and the Rosary Beads

I've tried a couple of routes for walking and exercise lately but this one is my favorite. The Mt. Diablo state park entrance is about 1 mile away so if Igo to the gate and back I can walk/run 2 miles each day, that is if I motivate myself to do it. Today as I was walking and getting quite hot, we finally have had nice temperatures and sun for the past 3 days, I thought a lot about why I haven't walked each and every day.

It's so easy to put things off isn't it? You can always find some excuse for not doing something. Lately, my excuses if I actually pull them out and think about them have been things such as these: it's too cold; I'm too tired; is it safe?; we need to do....; should I really leave them all here by themselves?; I'd rather walk or sit in the garden; and on and on. I could probably think of some more if I tried. It's not as if I don't enjoy it. I do so love to exercise and especially here; the view is incredible, beautiful, and the weather so pretty (most days), that there's not any great reason not to. I'm doing it for stamina, more energy, and because it's good for my body. And a nice side benefit would be to lose about 10-15 pounds, pounds that have crept up on me as a result of having been pregnant at least part of every year since 2003. So this morning, I didn't think about any excuses, I just drug myself out the door into the sunshine, told Tio I was leaving (he and Scott were trimming the knot garden) and I headed out. And of course, it was enjoyable.

On the way back just as I was passing some beautiful scenery and looking excitedly towards the house hoping to see flowers along the road and the gate soon, it dawned on me. Like exercise, we can always find excuses to not do something which has great benefit, such as spend time with the Lord. It was as if God spoke clear from heaven down to me, the only person on the road, straight into my soul. You see, my child, don't give up or give in. It's always worth it.

My walking and exercise habits are not interesting to you or me. But this is the lesson that is worth noting. Don't give up on something important. And what is most important? God. Don't give up on our time with Him. How easy is it for us to say, I'm too tired; I have too much to do; I can't leave the children alone; and on and on. You can easily think of reasons not to spend some time each day reading and meditating. What about other things that are important? A person you'd like to give up on; a job you'd like to give up? With God, it is always worth it and He will renew your soul and bless you in the process.

Recently Patty gave me some rosary beads. We had actually found them in the couch cushions and tried to return them. I had all kinds of questions which I felt comfortable asking her. I'm sure you can imagine them. (If you're one of my Catholic friends, please stop laughing now.) She answered all of my questions and explained the whole reason behind the beads. What is interesting is that I, albeit not Catholic, do the same things when I pray as she does every morning with her beads.

Protestants come up with neat little acronyms for it, such as ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thankfulness, Supplication, sound familiar?). Sometimes I repeat scriptures, recite the Lord's prayer (Jeff is working on that right now with the little ones), or recite verses. My biggest problem is that I fidget (called ADD); fall asleep (now how do you think the Lord likes that?); and forget where I am in my prayers sometimes. Now that I have these beads, I have decided this is a handy little device for me to remember where I am and what I want to say to the Lord. I can keep my place, basically. Having something to hold onto keeps me more focused. I also don't fall asleep as easily when being so still listening to the Lord. Now, God definitely speaks to my soul and I to Him when I'm zooming fast through my day, but when I have that quiet "closet" time, I wait to hear Him speak then as well.

I'm thrilled with the beads so don't laugh if you see me with them. And I cannot wait until tomorrow morning to talk to God as I walk and hopefully all day, "walk the talk". It is so definitely worth it.

Baby Skunks

Here are the pictures I promised to post of the baby skunks right outside the door. We haven't seen them anymore.

Yosemite National Park ~ Wednesday, June 1, 2011

On the first day of June, 2011, we trekked to Yosemite National Park. Scott who reads a lot, had for years thought that Yosemite was pronounced Yosahmight, with the 'o' being a long vowel. He didn't know it was different and as we began to talk about visiting Yosemite before coming to California, he thought that was a different park than the Yosahmight one he had read about. He has been good-natured about the teasing, so in our house, we call it Yosemite and occasionally call it Yosahmight just for fun.
It was quite a drive, about 3.5 hours. We left the house around 5:20 am with bright daylight and arrived home last night at 10:45 pm. A long day, but a fun one. Scott is taking a writing class from Beth Hempton (http://www.classesbybeth.com/) and he has been doing pretty well keeping up with his assignments using Jeff's computer. He had one due on Yosemite day and had been working on it over the weekend quite a bit. However, Tuesday, Jeff had his computer with him in Sacremento all day (he had meetings with Cal-Trans, the CA DOT) and Scott did not get finished on Tues. night. So, on the way to Yosemite he worked on his paper amidst many curvy roads. It's a good thing he doesn't get car-sick. We did not have internet connection most of the day so he couldn't send it in until last night but we were all so exhausted that the editing and sending had to be done today (Thursday).
About as soon as we got into the park, we saw this brown bear on the side of the road. We are unsure exactly what kind of bear this is though, because later, we heard that only black bears live here. Huh?? Several diffferent rangers mentioned this. We're still wondering about this.

The famous Yosemite Falls. We took a short hike to the lower falls.

Yosemite Falls from a distance.

Riding the shuttle from the parking lot to the visitor's center which was not too crowded. By lunchtime though, the park was very crowded.

Walking back down from the falls.

More pictures of the lower falls.

Jeff and I with our little bundle of joy who is all bundled. The "high" in Yosemite today was 55 degrees.

Here you can see both the upper and lower falls but cannot see the third one unless you hike pretty far up.

Jackson loved these miniature stop signs, just his size.

Grassy meadows, now protected, where cars and people used to get stuck in the bog and camp out. Behind us is Half-Dome, a large granite monolith that climbers all over the world come to for a climbing challenge.

This little gal went through 4 sets of clothes during the day; it's a good thing we came prepared. Here she is in the middle of a change.

2 hikers we saw. They are carrying empty apple juice containers on their backs. We suppose they are using them for water.

Climbers on El Capitan; the world's largest granite monolith at 3,593 feet high. You can barely see these climbers and we used the furthest zoom lense on the camera that we had. The only way we could see them well was with binoculars.

In the southern part of the park, there is a huge amount of great sequoia trees. Here is an old one that army soldiers in the late 1800s used to ride their horses on.

Amazingly, this is a pine cone and seeds off of a great sequoia tree.

This particular tree, the California Tunnel Tree, has been driven through in years past.

The seed cone of a sugar pine.

2 deer cross our path.

At the pioneer center, we saw a whole barnful of different wagons used in this area. Here is the "Sprinter" wagon, known then as a "Matha". This 11-passenger one would have had to have been our transportation if we had lived in that time.

Mosquito spraying wagon; they did this back then too, just like today.

Seeing Black and White

We were sitting at the table at dinner a couple of nights ago and I had excused myself to go into the kitchen to get something. I was around the corner and all of a sudden I heard Jeff screaming for me to come and to come quickly. Honestly, yes I'm going to be honest here, all I could think of was what did they break? I came running expecting a huge mess, probably glass, and blood to accompany it and about that time, he's loudly asking for the camera. Then I knew everything was okay, but why such urgency? I grabbed the camera and arrived out on the porch to a scene none of us has ever seen and do not expect to see again.
Right outside the french doors on the patio was a large skunk and this is the best part, her 4 babies. They were milling around on the patio. It wasn't even dark so they were easy to see. The little ones were so cute and had their tails in the air. There was about 3 feet between us and them with the windows of the door for separation. We took pictures which don't show much because of the glass doors, so we stepped outside onto a porch which connects the sunroom to our bedroom. This way we were viewing them from the side looking over at the patio. They did not seem to register our presence at all and thankfully we did not end up making any runs to the store for tomato juice.
About the time we stepped out, the mama made her way around the edge of the proch towards the side yard and disappeared. I was not about to follow her. She up and left her babies who didn't seem to be bothered by this. They kept playing and snuggling and falling all over each other. They were so cute. As we watched them I remembered that 2 of the boys had gone to the back of the property to take Patty some chili and cornbread and would be appearing in the yard on the other side of these skunks at any minute proabably running and making lots of noise. At the same time I saw the boys coming or heard them rather, they immediately saw us too so we held up our hands and said STOP! They quickly complied then realized what we were looking at. We all watched like this silently until these babies made their way through the yard and along the sidewalk to an area underneath the house under the bay window of the dining room. Oh my! Now we are wondering if they have a little home under there? This house has a basement so they cannot be too far underneath. One thing we noticed was a slight odor, very faint and they definitely did not spray us. Thank goodness!
We went back to dinner and continually checked. Jeff took a flashight a couple of times and stood at a distance but we could only partially see them. He also went into the dinigng room and knocked on the floor a little bit but they did not come out, at least for the next hour. We haven't seen them since but it would be nice to see them again as long as they keep their special odor to themselves.
I will post the pictures I took of the skunks later today. They are on the camera which Jeff has taken along with Scott to the city for a tour of Alcatraz Island.