Outside of family, THIS was what I looked most forward to about going south.

Memom told us that she wasn’t making a lot of plans but if there was something we wanted to do that she would set it up.  Well, riding horses with the cousins has become a staple and I contacted Mom right away and asked for it to be added to the agenda.

Most of the kids were old enough to ride alone this time and KB and Little were gracious about having friends in the saddle with them.  I get a lot of joy from watching our Little interact with animals and horses are a real favorite of hers.  Thanks Memom and Pop for this special treat.

My girlies with my daddy:

My mom and my older sister (in-law):

Just for fun, look what I found:

Earlier in the week we were driving to school in the close quarters of the Porter truck. Little was with us on this rare occasion because her daddy had a breakfast date and I was delivering everyone to school in shifts.  The radio was on and the lady was reading  the news. . . something about our government expanding our debt ceiling until February don’t get me started.  Good parenting would probably see me talking calmly about what we were hearing.  Apparently, I am not a good parent.

I had a bit of an explosion  and just yelled out, “Our leaders are selfish and sinful men making terrible decisions because they want to make a name for themselves and are too proud to admit they might have been wrong before.  I KNOW God says for us to honor them because they are our authority and their place of leadership did NOT take Him by surprise, but I just don’t know how to do that when we are being led by such selfish and sinful men.”

There was silence and the Bubba said, “Do these men work for Obama in the capitol building?”

Before I could answer him Little spoke wistfully while looking out the window and up at the sky, “Maybe it would be better if we just all go up to heaven beyond the clouds.”

From the mouth of babes – – -maybe I’m not so bad a parent after all!

Many people would think that our family is just plain weird, but I happen to think we are super fun.  On a rainy morning we split into two teams and created team cheers.  Memom orchestrated an entire event – the Summer Games of 2013.  You wouldn’t believe how much you can play on a screened in porch!! Here you see one team doing their cheer. . .

There were relays of all types. . .

a bean bag toss . . .

and a game of “on-the-blanket-off-the-blanket” for the tie breaking point.  That’s right – we had winners! Barney was NOT on the porch!!!

This is the kind of thing my family does that makes us “US”.  I love us.  And we all love Memom for making “US” possible.