Horse-drawn Sled!

A few years ago we decided to try our horse, Puzzle, out on pulling us on a sled! It was so much fun we decided to do it again this year. Hopefully it will be a Christmas tradition. We did this on the Wednesday before Christmas Eve. It had a bit of a rough start though, because we spent the first fifteen minutes of the activity chasing down Blue. She got scared when Marc pulled the rope through the sled and she took off running through the orchard and then through a couple yards in the neighborhood. Lucky for us, though, she stopped to visit our neighbor's horse and we were able to catch her easily once she stopped.

After that it was a little challenging to get 4 and 10 to get on the sled. 4 had a lot of fun riding by herself while I ran alongside her and I lifted and drug 10 onto the sled and ran by him for a bit too. You can see in the picture how I drug him onto the sled and laid him there. He had the coat over his face but you could still hear the muffled laughter as Blue ran to pull him. I find that more often than not, my kids are scared to do things but if I make them get past their anxiety they end up really enjoying themselves. Speaking of 10, I forgot to mention one of the things he said on the Monday we found out about Baby have FXS.

Me (holding back tears): "10 we found out that Baby has Fragile X Syndrome too."
10: "Oh, Baby, I am so happy you are just like me. (Squealing) I am so happy."

It was a good lesson learned for me.

Here are the pics:

Baby all bundled up ready to go

On our way out to he orchards

Waiting for Blue to come back

Blue's back...

That's me and Baby back there in the brush.
It was so much fun, I giggled the hole way.


13 on his fun ride

Here's 10 — he is smiling — I promise

We went till it got dark