A Rodeo Family: A Fun & Busy Week!

Last weekend was the start of Kyle's 4th of July run. The girls and I didn't have much going on so we last minute decided to make a trip to my Mom's house. There are not many free weekends between now and when my Mom will be moving our of my childhood home, so I want to go back and soak up as much time there as I possibly can. I am so excited about my Mom moving to town and Dusty getting the opportunity to raise his kids where he grew up, but very sad to see this chapter of my life come to a close. I have so many great memories from growing up on the farm, I am very proud to have had the opportunity to be raised a farm girl :-) Life was not easy growing up on the farm. There was always lots of work that needed to be done, but looking back I could not have picked a better way to grow up.

We had a great time with Mom, it was a very relaxing weekend. On Saturday we took the girls into the pool in town and Danielle brought the boys into swim. It was a little on the cool side, but it was still fun. The doctor said one of the best things for Jenae's arm was swimming. After swimming and horse chores were done, we had a movie night. We watched Cowgirls & Angels. It is a really good movie. My parents had given it to Jenae for Christmas. It is a movie with a really good story line and being about Cowgirls, my girls were very entertained by it.

Sunday Mom was to watch the Herchenbach boys while Danielle and Kevin were going out of town. We did an impromptu photo session with the boys while we had them. The kids played and played and played! They had so much fun playing with the farm set, playing in the trees & riding bikes. Lots of great memories for them were made that day.

Mom and I picked 10 cups of Mulberries for me to freeze to make my Grandma's Mulberry Cherry Pie. The girls were sad to see the weekend come to a close.

Tuesday the girls did their 4-H presentations. When Jenae broke her arm this summer and we knew she would not be able to go out and ride all summer long like she usually does, Marilyn asked me what I thought about Jenae doing a speech for 4-H. I was all for it! I knew with Marilyn's experience in giving speeches that it would be done well!! She and the girls did such a great job in writing the speeches and Marilyn worked really hard with them on getting them ready to present the speech. Both girls did so good, I could not have been more proud!!! They both had them memorized and Jenae's speech was about 6 minutes and Aubree's was 2-3 minutes.

We also kept very busy this week gathering turtles for the 4th of July turtle races. We found 4 turtles in all. Or I should say Buster found 2 turtles and the other 2 turtles found us!!

Aubree has kept very busy riding horses this week. She is making such great progress with her riding skills. She was a girl who this spring was petrified of doing any thing more than a walk and wanted to have her horse ponied everywhere to wanting to lope and lope and lope.

Aubree and Jaxson with the old peddle tractor at Mom's house.

Wild Whitney in the pool. She loves the water and has no fear of going under. If she falls face first into the water she stands up coughs a little bit, wipes her face off and away she went! Never fussed about having water in her face or anything.

Jenae & Tyson in the big pool.

Aubree, Kellen and Cooper just chilling in the water.

The Herchanbach Boys! Such a handsome group of boys :-)

(Back row L-R) Cooper (5) Jaxson (1) Kellen (7)
(Front) Tyson (9)

The kids enjoying a late breakfast on Sunday morning.

Mom found this bird in the tree while we were picking Mulberries. She was sitting so peacefully in her nest and just watched Mom and me pick berries.

Mom with the Herchenbach boys and the Whitaker Girls.

Aubree's speech was about Goats. She did so good! She stood up there and spoke right up. Her intro was "Hi-iiiiiii today I am going to teach you about goats." Her conclusion was "I hope you all learned a lot about goats Bye-yyyyyy" and sounded like a goat with her "Hi & Bye" it was so cute!! She is a clover kid so they do not get judged. Everyone gets a participation ribbon. She was very proud of her rainbow colored ribbon!!

Jenae was the Grand Champion Jr. Presenter. She did a really good job! She & Marilyn put together a power point presentation. It was a good experience for Jenae to learn that if you put the hard work in on a project the results show!