And so it begins...

Lauren is now 9 months old! At her well-baby check up, she weighed 20 lbs. and 6 oz, which brought her down from the 97th percentile (at her 6 month check up) to the 85th, so apparently crawling is doing her some good! She is 27 1/2 inches tall, which still puts her around the 50th percentile for height. She crawls all over the place and has started pulling herself up on everything! She is going to take off one of these days trying desperately to keep up with her big sisters. Currently, one of her favorite things to do is to take all the movies off the shelves and chew on them...everything goes in the mouth of course! She still prefers to get milk from mom, whether it's in a bottle or otherwise. But we are working on her taking a bottle from someone besides me. The dogs food and water bowls have also become a favorite of hers to play with. And yes, she tries to eat the dog food...like I said, everything goes in the mouth! I just can't believe she is getting so big and will be walking soon!!!

Gotta love that smile! We are so blessed;)

Meet Cricket!

I finally got my horse!!! She is a 12 y/o quarter horse, a little over 14 hh, and is very sweet! We are calling her Cricket. Bear and I spent a while on Saturday getting things ready for her. Bear didn't mind too bad because he got to get the big tractor out and move around some dirt. I'm not sure if you call it good or bad timing, but just as he was finishing the tractor work, one of the front tires went flat. Bear even cleaned out the tack shed and reorganized it! We went over to Uncle Larry's to get the new saddle and tack fitted to her, and of course to take a little ride and make sure everything fit right. We got done with all that and were getting ready to go home when we noticed there was a fire across the street from their house! And of course, because this is Kansas, the wind was blowing, so we were worried about how bad the fire was going to spread. A couple minutes later, we heard sirens coming down the road. Thankfully someone had called the fire department! But, we ended up getting parked in by a firetruck and had to stay there for a while longer. Thank God that no one got hurt, or no horses for that matter either! Since it was completely dark by then, we decided it was best to have the horse brought over the next day so she wouldn't have to move to a new place in the dark. Larry and Teresa brought her over Sunday morning before church, and she is doing absolutely fine! She has a nice big area to run around in. After lunch, Bear and I got her out and ready to ride for the first time at home.

Even Bear got up and took her for a ride. Usually when he gets on any horse, it has to throw a little fit for him, but she didn't. She was a little unsure of her new surroundings, but did a good job. Mamaw got up and gave her a test drive too! Here she is with all her gear on getting ready to go...

Sorry, no pics of me riding her. I forgot that I had the camera in my pocket...oops! But this was right after I had just finished riding her and was getting ready to lead her back towards the barn.

YEAH...I HAVE A HORSE!!!!!!!!!! I'm not too excited, can you tell? Thanks Mom! And a big huge thanks to Larry and Teresa for being incredibly patient and very helpful to me as I'm new to this horse ownership business and am learning tons from them! Thank you so much!

Mischief with scissors

How bad is it, that even with both Bear and I home, Caitlyn and Allison got a hold of some scissors, went and hid in the playroom, and proceeded to cut their hair without us having a clue about it?!?! Terrible, I know! We couldn't tell at first where on their head they cut their hair, because both of them had their hair up in some variety of pony tail. And when I took their hair down, the girls were both incredibly lucky! Most of the hair they cut was right around their face, and almost made it look like some layering was done. So, neither of them have butch haircuts like I thought they would need. Caitlyn cut about 6 inches off her hair, and Allison cut about 4 inches off. They were so lucky this time! Let's just hope they don't do it again.