Spring Break

Rachel and I just got back from Utah. It was so fun to see my grandparents and a couple of aunts and uncles, and cousins. Rachel had so much fun coloring with her cousins, and doing plays, and playing with their babies. On Saturday my dad took us to a friend's house to let Rachel ride a pony--technically a miniature horse (which I now know is soooo much better than a pony ;-)

While it wasn't her first horse ride, she said it was the "longest pony ride ever" and she especially liked the pony's braided hair and pink saddle.

I was a little surprised to see Rachel having so much fun on a pile of dirt--I mean, that is all we have in Chinle and it isn't any fun to play in. Then I realized, flat dirt= no fun. BIG PILE of dirt= AWESOME! That said, we are going to try and create some big piles out of all of our dirt.

How many of you can say you've ridden a cow?! Random I know--but we were there for the whole experience and our friend said this cow (#111) would let you ride it--so we did.
I like this picture of Rachel-she was trying to be cool and act like a country girl-but here, her city girl roots are showing. (she is walking through all the cow pies and she is tip-toeing and holding her pants up so they don't get poop on them lol!) The two year old with us was running everywhere and jumped in a few on purpose.

Lots of sand + wind = no fun. We had heard that spring here can get very windy, and dusty, and today was one of those days. I drove through about 2 hours of dust, got ambushed by a troop of tumbleweeds, and came home to a power outage. I wish I could have captured the tumbleweeds on film, but I thought it better to keep both my hands on the steering wheel and my eyes focused on trying to see the lines on the road. Very glad to be home!