Camping in a pasture

A friend of my dad owns a lot of land in Morgan County. He had offered up his land repeatedly to my dad to use as a camping spot. My dad finally took him up on his offer and invited us to come along. Once we got to the house, we drove to the back of the house, past all the cows, past an orchard with horses, then past another orchard, to our camping spot. It was rather strange, at first, driving through someones land, or "backyard" of sorts. But it was seriously so cool. We felt so secluded. So peaceful.

The guy had some horses and said we were welcome to ride them; then he left us to be on our own.

Kenzie was the first to ride. She loved it. Though she doesn't get to ride often, this was her element.

She got off the horse, we took a break for dinner, and then out of nowhere, another horse (the riding horses' daughter) on the other side of the rope, was on our side of the rope to get closer to its mom. We had been told that this younger horse was wild so we were a bit scared of it getting too close.

Instead of calling the man who owns the horses, my husband takes things into his own hands and jumps onto the saddled horse and tries to take care of the situation by herding the other horses back to the other orchard. In the meantime, another totally different horse gets over the rope. So now we have 3 horses in our "campsite".

We were all a little worried. But I just sat watching my cowboy husband ride a horse like he does it everyday and 'it ain't no big thang'. I had no idea that he could ride like that. I was pretty impressed!

I grabbed my camera to get some proof for later than I had married a cowboy and one of the first shots I got was this one.

I snapped this right as one of the horses (an old horse) took his rear leg to the horse Skyler was riding. The horse is used to being the alpha male, so he wasn't happy that he was being told what to do of sorts by Skyler and his horse.

After that my dad called for some help and and in the meantime, Skyler was able to get them back to the other pasture. Skyler was my hero! Little did I know, that he was hit in the ankle when the horse kicked back. Luckily it was just a scrape. It sure made for quite a story. This was no ordinary camping experience that's for sure!

S'mores. Our main goal this summer has been to master making the perfect s'more.

We're getting there, but not quite there yet. Oh, how I love campfires and s'mores!

Some of us didn't leave our electronic devices home.
However, this was a good way to entertain a toddler.

Family Hike

I love hiking with my family. I wish there was more time to go on all the hikes I want to go. This was the same hike we did last fall. I wanted to see it in the summer. It was beautiful, except for all the bugs. They were terrible. They made it difficult to enjoy the scenery.

Attempt

at a quick family picture

July

(((Bubbles are awesome)))

 Aunt C'eras' dog "Twiggz" and Westin are best buddies

To say the dog is patient with him would be the understatement of the year.

If we ever get a dog, I want it to be just like Twiggz.

Cute boy

I had been looking and looking for something to put under our TV for a long time and finally we found a beautiful piece of furniture at an estate sale in our own ward one morning. We got it for a steal. I love it. I still have yet to do some work to it to bring it back to life, but it already makes our living room look so much more grown-up than our cheap coffee table with toys all over it:)

We went camping for the first time with Westin on our ward campout.

He slept wonderfully, until he woke up at 5am wondering where he was. Eventually, he went back to sleep. We had lots of fun and haven't been able to get enough of camping since.

 

After a nap.

July 4th

I'll be trying to catch up on some of our summer fun pictures. We'll start with the 4th of July.

Westin really really enjoyed this day. I was a little surprised how much he got into some of the activities of the day. 

At the parade he did lots of cheering and looked really interested in the floats and in all of the

goings on. With the fireworks, he wasn't so much a fan of the close ones on the street but he loved the

city fireworks show at the end of the night. He cheered and cheered! 

Fun day.