Rodeo Time!

September 12, 2010

My daughter Amanda takes horse riding lessons and recently they started a saddle club. Click here to see the website for it. She's had to change horses a few times since joining the saddle club but her and Ginger are getting better. Ginger is a young horse too and when you have two inexperienced participants it gets a little crazy. Usually I'm pulling Ginger around the barrels but Amanda can get her to head for the finish line.

This is a picture I took before the rodeo started.

Amanda is very much like her father in that she's a bit type A. I think she's one of those perfectionists that will want to be perfect at something or not do it at all. Well luckily she's good at riding but sometimes the horse doesn't listen to her and she gets frustrated and wants to just let go of the reins. I told her that the horse is not like the horse in Avatar. She can't just "think" go and the horse will go. She has to use all the techniques that Mr. Chris as shown her. She has to use her legs and make a kissing sound. Well when she remembers to do this she can make Ginger go. When she forgets to do something Ginger doesn't move and that frustrates her. As her mother she doesn't want to listen to me when I tell her to use her legs or if I tell her she's pulling back on the reins too much. She ends up having a few tears and I feel like maybe riding in the rodeo is too stressful. I would probably quit if I was her, but she is a trooper and continues to do the rodeo and tries her best.

Last night she participated in all the events except the diaper race. (You'll have to go to the website to find out more about that!) She did really good and earned 3 ribbons. Two 4th place and one 5th place. I was so proud of her and told her so. She asked me if I was proud of her because she won three ribbons. I said no. She asked me if I was proud of her for getting stepped on by the horse. (Ginger really did step on her foot and when we took her boot off there was a bruise and Amanda was crying but could wiggle her toes). So I told her I wasn't proud about that. She asked me, "What are you proud of?" I said, "I'm proud of you for not giving up, especially after Ginger stepped on your foot. You finished the rodeo and I'm so proud of you for not quitting." She smiled sooo big. I think it's a very good thing to have adversity in a child's life. Maybe sheltering them from disappointment isn't so good. Amanda is learning to handle disappointment, pain, frustration. This will all be good to know when she's an adult. Thank you God for letting us participate in this wonderful world.

So my daughter Amanda got stepped on by her horse. Do you wonder where Jessica was during all this? She runs around and plays with other kids, dogs and anyone she can find. She tried to make a campfire and was rubbing two sticks together. She couldn't get it to work so she made me rub them together. I finally had to tell her it wasn't going to work.

Usually Amanda is my accident prone one, but last night Jessica encountered some fire ants. She came over to me screaming and crying and when she finally held still I saw a ton of ants crawling on her bottom. I started to swat them off but she kept moving and screaming. I told her to hold still. Finally I didn't see anymore ants and a nice lady had some Bactine to spray on the bites. Her arm was covered in them. Poor thing. She cried for a good long time. She's tough though and after the bites stopped hurting she was off playing again.

So that was my rodeo time last night. I need to get that stamp set in the catalog so I can make some fun scrapbook pages.

Here's the image of the set.