I Got Set Up By Sixlet

This boy.  He's gonna be trouble.  Smart as a whip, and devilish too.

He's just two and a half, yet he took something DH told him, thought about it and an hour or so later had a joke on me.  It went like this:

We had him and him alone for a few hours one afternoon.  One of the first things he did after coming to our house, was to walk over to the counter in the kitchen where I keep my cookie jar, and ask his Papa if he could have a snack.

DH, noting Sixlet's chosen location by the cookie jar rather than the fridge or the pantry, where we typically dole out snacks from, told him that we didn't have any cookies because "Amma ate them all."  

I protested that I had not eaten them all; that the day before there had been two cookies, Papa had taken one and then given me the other--the last one.

We offered him some grapes, or an apple instead, both of which Sixlet declined.

They went outside to play for a while.  When they returned inside, Sixlet again asked for a snack, this time opening the door on the side of the pantry where I keep crackers and things like that.  I told him I had (mini) pretzels, and asked if he would like some of those.  He loves pretzels, so he eagerly accepted my offer.  DH put a handful of pretzels in a small bowl for him, and the three of us went into the livingroom.

Sixlet and I were sitting on the couch, with DH in his recliner, and Sixlet offered me a pretzel, then ate several of his pretzels, and offered me another one of them.  I like pretzels, so I ate what he gave me. 

When his bowl was empty, he asked DH if he could have more, and DH put another handful, which happened to be the remainder of the bag, into Sixlet's bowl.  

"That's all there is," DH told Sixlet.

Sixlet ate this second serving more slowly, offering me the broken parts of the pretzels and eating the intact ones himself.  As the bowl got close to being empty again, he paused, eating the last two whole pretzels before picking out four small pieces, which he offered to me.  I asked him if he wanted them, but he shook his head and said "for you, Amma."  So I ate them.

No sooner had I chewed up and swallowed those four pieces, than Sixlet turned to DH, holding up his bowl and tipping it upside down so DH could see that it was empty.  

"Amma ate all the pretzels!" he announced accusatorily, quite proud of himself.

That little squirt set me up!  He'd eaten all the unbroken pretzels, and then, when there were only crumbs left, he'd given those to me--without me asking for any--and insisted that I should eat them.  And once I had, he couldn't wait to show his Papa that there were no more pretzels.

If he can plot that in his head and execute it at just two, I can only imagine what he'll come up with as a teenager.

Photo-ful Week

 This past week, in pictures.

Saturday, at a small old-fashioned (no agri-tainment, only cider and doughnuts) cider mill with most of the grandkids.

Sunday, Rascal's flag football game, where Faline cheered.

Monday, sugar maple leaves getting bright.

Tuesday, Jedi loving his after-ride itch-relieving roll, and the last of the flowers from the garden.

Wednesday, beautiful weather could it be Indian Summer?

Thursday, sunrise looking like another great weather day.

Friday, cranes in the pasture and the maples are popping!

Saturday again all ready, caught the pre-dawn bruised looking sky.

Not Cheeseballs: A Grandkid Tale

 See these?  These, despite the orange coloring on the package, and being snack-sized bags, are not cheeseballs.

Apparently, to a five year old, who is on a long car ride with her Papa and Amma and eldest girl cousin, on a quick glance, they give off the impression that they contain cheeseballs.

This is a story from our family vacation to Myrtle Beach last month.  K3 and Faline rode with DH and I to South Carolina.  DD1 had packed a bag of 'road snacks' for the girls, all being things that she had recently gotten from her community's weekly free food giveaway for famlies with small children (these sorts of things have popped up during the summers in many communities around us since covid, no income limits on who can get them). You cannot pick through what is offered each week, you are simply handed a bag for each child that you have.  This week snack-type items the bag contained were apples, small packages of baby carrots, little bags holding 5-6 grape tomatoes each, cheese and prezel dippers (like you'd put in your kid's lunch box), and these bright orange and white crinkly bags of small crispy feeling snacks.

Faline was super excited about this bag of (to her) mystery goodies that DD1 had sent with her with the instructions that she (Faline) couldn't eat any of the items until Papa or Amma said that it was snack time.  So excited that we were only about five miles down the road from this little place here, and thirty minutes since breakfast, when Faline started asking if she could have a snack. 

About two hours into our long drive the first day of vacation, DH and I finally told her she could choose one snack from the bag. Faline handed me one of these packages and asked if I could open it for her.  She called it cheeseballs, and I didn't read the package at all, just opened the top and handed it back to her.

Shortly after, from the backseat, DH and I heard this exclamation:

"THESE ARE NOT CHEESEBALLS!!!" said emphatically with great disgust. 

Followed by "How could Mom do this to me?!?"

Which, coming from a five year old. this statement of seeming betrayal was incredibly hilarious.  

And, when Faline handed me back the package that I'd opened for her, I could see why she was shocked and felt betrayed.  The bag did not contain cheeseballs.  It held buffalo-flavored fava bean crisps. BLECH!  Yeah, if I'd been expecting cheeseballs and popped one of these spicy crispy beans into my mouth, I'd be sorely disappointed too.  Especially if I was a kid who couldn't read the package and was going only by the coloring and the cartoony figure on it..

I confess that out of curiousity, I did pop one into my mouth.  Uh, that's a big NO from me too.  Not the bean part necessarily, but the strong buffalo flavoring on it.  I'm not a fan of buffalo chicken or anything else buffalo, apparently including fava beans.  Cheeseballs would have been a thousand times tastier.

Jedi's Progress

Jedi has been here for just over four months.  I am very pleased with his progress since he arrived in mid-April.  When he came, he was skinnier than I had expected (hadn't laid eyes on him in a couple of weeks since K3 and I had gone out for a test ride on him).  He was also way jumpier, tense almost all the time when being handled and didn't seem to know how to cross-tie.

April, a quick picture in a brief moment of stillness in the cross ties 

(at that time he would stand still for up to a minute, as long as there were other horses in the barn with him.)

I'm very happy with his weight gain, he's starting to look round now, and his spine no longer is a ridge that runs down his back.

nice 'flat' spine, not a ridge of bones

He also stands nicely in the cross ties most of the time, even without other horses in the barn with him.  I can trust him to stand quietly for a grandkid to groom him and not knock them over with a sudden jump sideways or forward, and he doesn't ever pull back on the ties.

Early August, he now stands calmly all by himself (no other horses in the barn) most of the time.

Also note how more filled out his body is compared to the April picture.

 He trusts us (me, DH, K3, and lately Faline has started handling him) now and isn't tense around us.  He does still have moments of forgetting to respect personal space--usually when being led out to the pasture--but even those are becoming fewer and farther between.

K3 and I have taught him to longe calmly rather than race around us in frantic circles.  He is learning to take polite contact with the longe line, and also to stay out on the end of it for his circle rather than crowding us or trying to cut through the center with a hugely drooping line that he could get his feet tangled in.

He stands quietly at the mounting block for kids to get on, and Faline to get off.  He still fidgets when I go to mount him, but not as badly.  We're still overcoming old habits and his prior (lack of??) training.

a business-like walk

K3 rides him around at walk and trot, his steering has improved and he hasn't walked (or trotted) through her reins in a while.  His trot, which was so tense and very sewing-machine-like (legs going straight up and down), is becoming more relaxed and longer strides forward with his legs.

K3 riding a long trot stride!

He has improved so much, in fact, that earlier this month I decided he was probably safe enough (trustworthy enough) to try putting Faline on.

Faline, posing for a picture pre-ride.

With me leading him, and DD1 walking on his right side as a spotter, Faline has ridden him twice now, about 10 minutes each time, at a walk.  She's never been on a horse before, so she's a little intimidated by his size and the newness of sitting up on a living thing that moves on its own.  Both rides have been very successful in terms of her enjoyment, and his good behavior.

We are on the right track, for sure.  I believe he will be (probably next year, since I don't see any of the grandkids riding much in the cold weather) a good horse that they all can ride and be safe on.  Which was the whole point of buying him.

A Pocket Full of Shells

 (My apologies if you will now have "Bulls on Parade" running through your head the remainder of the day).

This month, DH and I took our first family vacation in probably twenty years.  I know we didn't take one in 2007, the year DS1 graduated from high school, and the next year he was in the Marine Corps when we took the other three kids out to Oregon and back roadtripping to (and from) the family reunion hosted by DH's second youngest aunt. So it's been twenty years, or maybe even 21, since DH, I and all four of our children (and population exploded family) went away together on vacation.

We (DH & I) have talked about doing this for a long time, especially in the last several years.  Then, in 2025, on the flight back from taking K3 and Toad to Sedona over Spring Break, DH asked the two of them for ideas of places we could all go on vacation together in the future.  K3 said "The beach!"  Specifically she was thinking of Myrtle Beach, where we had taken her and Toad back in 2022, and her alone way back in 2015 (which she couldn't remember that trip because she was only 3 at the time.)

Which was how this family vacation went from concept to reality in 2026.  DH. Me.  Our four kids.  Their spouses (and DD2s current boyfriend [whom I really do need to assign a blog name to because he's looking more and more like a lifer]).  Nine grandkids (Two-EEs daughter Cowgirl didn't come; at 17 and having been living with her father and step-mother for the last few years she has in the past 8 months or so decided she doesn't 'need' her mother or that side of the family.)  Myrtle Beach.  Four days, three nights, lodging for everyone covered by DH and I. (They were on their own for food, transportation and activity expenses.)

It was chaotic.  I mean, is it even possible for anything involving 19 people, 9 of them children, to not be chaotic?  It was often loud. (NINE children!)  Was it enjoyable?  Do any of us ever want to attempt such a thing again?

YES!  And another YES!  In fact, on the long car ride home, there were texts flying back and forth vehicle to vehicle and state to state (it's about a 14 hour drive for most of us) proposing we do a huge group trip every 2-3 years.  Possible future vacation destinations were tossed around; from mountains to beaches to National Parks.

But back to this current vacation.  I tried to walk the beach every day.  Sometimes at low tide, sometimes at high tide.  Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening.

And it seemed that I couldn't take a beach walk without coming back with shells in my pocket.  Which brought to mind the lyric "rally round the family with a pocket full of shells".  Different context, different shells from the song mentioned above, but it sorta fit.  Lotta family.  Lotta shells.

some of my favorite shells are teeny, but intact

In addition to finding shells, there was 

--swimming, both in the ocean and several of the resort's pools (most of which I did not have my phone for, so very few swimming pictures)

9 grandkids together on the beach!, 

Buck, K3 holding Lucky, Toad holding Octavia, Rascal, Tractor (front), Faline (mostly hidden by Tractor), Sixlet

--kite flying; tiny kites that hardly show up in the pictures although we watched from our balcony other people (adults) flying huge shark and squid kites

--group dinners made in one or both of the suites we stayed in (one 3-bedroom suite and one 2-bedroom suite).  Smoked brisket and pulled pork (the first night, brought from home, smoked by DH), spaghetti and meatballs, make-your-own taco bar (Tuesday!), and white chicken chili with toasted baguettes (which oddly enough wasn't the wrong temp/flavor for a hot humid southern evening and was heartily enjoyed by all ages).

waiting to be called to dinner

waiting again

--kids babysat by aunts and uncles while sets of parents each had a turn at a childess afternoon or evening out.

DD1 in charge of (niece) Octavia

 --general shenanigans

Monkeys on the luggage cart

"Hiding"

Can a 2 year old fit in the cabinet?

Yes, yes he can.

--and even a succesful family picture (which I decided was too many tiny faces to try to make them unrecognizable/anonymous so I could share it online and abide by my own no recognizable faces blog photos rule).  I have plans for that family picture to be enlarged and printed on a canvas to hang on my living room wall before the year is through. (We also have not had a 'real' family picture since before DS1 graduated high school in 2007.  Its been a crazy past 20 years.)

In addition to our mass activities, some family members formed various smaller groups for various outings (I didn't go, so didn't get pictures) such as:

• miniature golf 
• go-carts 
• an aquarium visit 
• a driving range
• a nature preserve 

And while they were gone to those things, I enjoyed some peace and quiet, reading or knitting or beach walking or sitting on the edge of the water just feeling the waves and thinking; and recharging my (introvert) batteries for more group fun!

The Sun Comes Up

 

And the sun goes down

What goes on in between?

This is kind of a deep thought type of post.  Soul searching?  Navel gazing?  What do you do with your day?  Day after day after day. . . 

We strive to put ourselves where we want to be, but then when we get there, is it actually where we want to be?  Is it what we thought it would be?  Do we want it afterall?

In my head, I can hear John Mellancamp singing Paper in Fire: 

"She had a dream
And boy it was a good one
So she chased after her dream
With much desire
But when she get too close
To her expectations
Well the dream burned up
Like paper in fire"

On the surface, I'm living my dream: Husband, Kids (and grandkids), Horse Farm. . .  

My big three goals I set way back in high school, and I've met them all.  Yes, I am living my dream.

Unless you look below the surface.  Then, well, they haven't been quite fulfilled in the way I had envisioned.  I never expected life to be easy.  I was choosing some lofty things, some unconventional (for the time) things, and I was not starting with a silver spoon.  I knew I was going to have to work and work hard.

In hindsight, I didn't know it was going to take so long to get to the 'work for myself, own my own horse farm, run my own boarding and training business' part.  When I decided to have children, and lots of them (as four was considered in the 1980s, and depending on who you talk to now still is) I knew I would have to put off a lot of the horse business part until my kids were grown up.  Having a husband whose career was our bread and butter, and whose career required a lot of travel on his part, meant that my career couldn't require me to be unavailable to my children on evenings and weekends (when childcare is difficult to get, let alone prohibitively expensive).  So, showing horses (as I had all through my teen years) was not going to be happening.  Which meant training horses for other people wasn't really going to be a viable option either.  Okay, I can deal with that.  I can wait; I'll do what I can in the interim and I'll hit the ground running when my kids are grown up.

And then, the kids were grown up.  The time I'd been waiting for, had watched with growing excitement draw nearer and near, had come.  At least, in my plans it had.  Not so much, apparently, in what other people had planned for me.  They loved me in my (almost) always available to them position.  Me, I was more than ready to shed that for phase 2: my life full time with horses.

In the ten plus years since DD2 graduated from high school--my original expected emancipation from people caretaking date--it seems like every time I try to take a step away from my past role and into my highly anticipated second career things come up to keep me from making the change.  Or, at least, make the change extremely difficult to keep up with.

So many times I have felt like shouting WTF People!?! Get with the program!  Get out of my way!  Behave!  Be mature!  Be responsible for yourself (and your offspring)!  Leave me alone; I've paid my mama dues, I faithfully raised all the ones I birthed to adulthood.  Go!  Go!  Get with the program, take care of yourself! It's my turn now!  My time is supposed to be my own and nobody is supposed to try to make me feel bad about wanting it.

I look at all the tasks that fall into the "Kris/Mom/Grandma basket", some I've willingly put there and others I wish other people hadn't assigned to me.  Which do I want to do?  Which am I needed to do?  Which should I do? Which won't cause the world to come to an end if I don't do them?

Boundaries.  Sometimes I want to erect them like a stockade fence around me.  Just because I'm trying to be self-employed, which in a way means I get to set my own schedule, doesn't mean I'm available whenever someone else wants something from me.  I know dang well that if I was punching a time clock at a business not owned by me, if I had to report for duty on certain hours on prescribed days to a location not at this little place here, people wouldn't even consider asking me to do things for them during 'work' hours Monday through Friday.  Just because I don't leave my own property to 'go to' work doesn't mean people should assume I can drop things at their whim, let alone expect me to do so.

All these things people want me to do for them.  A lot are things I did for them, have done for them, but really, that time has passed and they need to step up and take those tasks on for themselves.  Like finding themselves a list of non-emergency babysitters for their children (my grandkids) that doesn't begin and end with Grandma (me).  Or, in the case of DH, taking back some of the household tasks he used to do before his job got so demanding and took him away from home so much of his waking hours every week.  His job isn't like that anymore.  And while his household task skills are rusty and he has forgotten a lot of them, they are still there.  They need to be brought out, dusted off, oiled up and put back into practice.  Because I can't continue to do them all even though I have for a long, long time.  Not if I'm operating my own business.  Ie. working, having a career, like has been his excuse (and at times my grown up childrens' excuse) why I must be the one to carry that particular load that needs to be done in a timely fashion.

*Deep cleansing breath*

This, truly, falls into the 'training of people' category.  I love training horses, even though it takes time and requires lots of patience and repetition and, often, readjusting the timeline for your goals.  Training people, teaching them to honor my time and my boundaries, I  don't love so much.  I don't have the same tolerance and patience for repeating things over and over waiting for people to learn it as I do horses.  I mean, people, afterall, speak the same language and (for the most part) think the same way as I do.  It's not like with an animal, a horse, where you have to allow for the language barrier and the totally different way their brain works and know that you can't just say "this is the way we do it now" and expect the animal to understand and instantly follow the newly stated procedure.

Ugh.  Training people is a pain in the patootie.  Some days it feels like I'll be stuck doing ever more people training for the rest of my life and won't be able get to the amount of horse training I would rather spend my time at.

The sun comes up.

And the sun goes down.

Busy, Busy, Family-full Weekend

 Last weekend was not our ordinary Let's Tackle a Project weekend.  Rather, we were busy all three days of the holiday weekend, yet got zero projects done and even had a hard time fitting in the normal daily/weekend tasks like mowing the lawn, horse chores, chicken care, etc.  

On Saturday we spent several hours in the middle of the day having a Meet The Parents lunch with DD2 and her boyfriend (whom I've been mute on for nearly a year that I've known about him, biding my time and waiting to see how things go before giving him an official name and presence on my blog).  He'd met DH and I last summer, and she had met his parents last summer, when the two of them decided they were going to take their relationship from talking and getting to know each other to being an official dating couple.  Since then he's been to our family functions and she's been to his, but parents had not been introduced to each other.  His family lives a little over an hour from ours.

DD2 and boyfriend will soon be moving together near the very bottom edge of Michigan; at the beginning of the year he took a job across the border in Ohio (after, in late 2025, government funding  to the research job he'd been doinggot axed and thus he too got axed).  As their relationship progressed, they decided to look for housing together closer to his job and DD2 started looking into transferring from the veterinarian office she works at to another of the same 'chain' that is also just across the border in Ohio.  This spring she was made aware of an upcoming opening in the office down there, went for an interview, and was offered the job to start as soon as she moved.  They have signed a lease on a brand new modular home and will be moving in mid-June.  Right after that, DD2 will start at the new to her vet office.

So, while it wasn't exactly an 'our kids are engaged to get married, we should meet each other' Meet The Parents, it sort of had that tone.  And it was very nice to meet his parents; they are friendly people and I can definitely see that he gets his ebullience from his mom while his dad seems to be the stereotypical quiet engineer type (his father and DH, while they haven't worked together, have worked for the same gigantic employer and even in some of the same locations but at different times in different programs).

That was our 'family Saturday'.

Then, on Sunday, K3 got confirmed into the church. 

 Between her 'examination' during the Bible Study hour, the Rite of Confirmation and taking her first communion during the church service, and then her open house afterward at DS1 and Two-ee's house, DH and I were gone from home about seven hours.  Which meant that when I was home I was cramming in stall cleaning and other horse related chores.

Unfortunately it poured rain for most of K3's open house, which made DS1 very glad that Two-ee's had talked him into renting a party tent for the event.  The guests, after dashing from their vehicles to the tent in the backyard, all stayed dry.  DS1 had borrowed our pig roaster to use as a super sized grill for the hamburgers and hot dogs being served, which was in danger of having the fire put out by the downpour, but he and DH were able to construct a makeshift roof for it with some 2x4s, cinderblocks, rope and a big tarp. The two of them got very wet in the process.

The kids, of course, didn't stay dry long as they delighted in running around in the rain outside of the tent as soon as their parents' backs were turned.  Sixlet in particular was fascinated by being rained on; in his just over two years of life he'd not yet been allowed to play in the rain, nor had he ever had a shower (just baths), and at first he was confused by how he could be getting so wet from above.

Of course his brother had to join in the fun, much to DD1's consternation (they were supposed to be going to Honorary Son's parents' house afterward) and also get soaking wet.

That was our 'family Sunday'

Monday DH and I went to the village for the big Memorial Day parade, which is at noon but if you want to get a spot on the edge of the street you really want to be there with your chairs right around 11:00.  We like to sit near the front of the (very small) library, which has a couple of shade trees and also easy access to the annual library book sale (which is by donation).  I didn't find very many books I was interested in this year and only purchased three, one of which was this cool Richard Scarry board book.

With the exception of DD2, who had to work a half day on Memorial Day (who makes a vet appointment for their cat or dog on Memorial Day??), all my kids made it to the parade this year.  The small cousins sat in front, jostling for position when candy was being thrown, and heartwarmingly sharing with each other when one would come up emptyhanded on the latest treat influx.

L to R: Sixlet, Rascal, Tractor, Faline 

(Buck was sitting in a chair and doesn't show in the photo,

Lucky was in a stroller just out of sight also)

After the parade, they dispersed to different places for lunch, with the exception of DS2, Surprise and Lucky, who came to our house.  DH had put a brisket in the smoker before heading to the parade, DS2 brought a brisket with him that he had begun the evening before at his own home, and we visited while the two briskets finished 'cooking'.  Then, in time for dinner, DS1 and family came, bringing leftover open house side dishes, DD1 and family came with a giant tub of cottage cheese, and DD2 came from her work shift bringing rhubarb muffins and a rhubarb crisp she had made the night before.  We all sat down to tables in the backyard (gorgeously sunny weather that day) and enjoyed a potluck style meal featuring two flavors of smoked brisket.

That was our 'family Monday'.  And I was exhausted!