Dreaming of Summertime

Winter is here in the Northwest. We have only had one snow day this year and that was before Thanksgiving. So this winter we have not had enough snow to play in. We got about an inch or two and it stuck on the ground for about a week but it wasn't enough snow to do anything in. No snow angels, no sledding yet. Lots of rain. They say during an El Nino year the Northwest receives more rain than usual. So that means A LOT of rain! I'm not from up here so the rainy weather gets old pretty fast. It's not so much the rain, but the mud that comes with it. Six horses can make any pasture muddy. So we have a lot of mud. Gravel or concrete is the only way to fight the mud. Concrete would be best but so expensive and there is no way we could afford it but boy do we need it here! Dreaming of concrete too!

I'm already looking forward to summer and our camping trips we will be taking. Winter is the perfect time to spend daydreaming and planning our trips. We camp a lot during the summer! I'm not a tent camper though. I'll do it but I'd rather take my camper or trailer. If I had it my way we'd be camping the whole summer but we have a house to take care of and animals. And my husband can't take off all that time. So we will spend the time we are not camping out at the lake. Last summer we would have spent most of the time there but they drained the lake after July 4th to work on the dam. Really ruined the lake plans!

We are going to be taking a couple horse-packing trips this summer. Yes, that's tent camping but I'm willing to compromise! You just can't drive an RV into the wilderness! If you could, it wouldn't be wilderness now, would it? I've never been horse-packing but have always wanted to. My parents are planning on coming with us. That in itself will be interesting. Their farrier is going to take us because he goes a lot. Since we are not experienced packers we will have him for expertise and he knows the wilderness much better than we do. We are becoming familiar with it but only in certain areas... not the Three Sisters Wilderness area. We are working with the kids to get them familiar enough with the horses and riding. They have been riding on the back of us for the last couple years which has made riding much more enjoyable. Now going riding with a bunch of munchkins on their own horses is tricky. I would certainly not call it relaxing! It's actually so much work. Just saddling up three horses instead of just mine and getting them all ready. Then positioning the horses in the best order along the trail is important as well. Some horses don't like each other, others are best friends and want to be next to their buddies. So figuring out this is important as well, otherwise they would be fighting with the rider the whole way trying to get near their favorite buddy. I know that it isn't a good idea to let horses get away with temper tantrums but when they are riding with small children, I do whatever I can to make the ride as smooth as possible and if giving in to their desire to be next to their buddy will make the ride go smoother, then I'll compromise with them. As long as they are taking care of my kiddos!! If they don't then they will have to walk behind me and be ponied like a baby horse. So we need to figure out all the kinks before our big trip. Plus it'll give the horses time to get used to each other and get to know one another. By summer they might like each other!

Sometimes I wonder if it's really worth it to have all these horses. My kids don't seem to enjoy them as much as I do. They mostly care about their Nintendo DS. Which bothers me greatly. I hate seeing them so engrossed in their games. But here in the Northwest, it rains and gets pretty cold... not ideal conditions to send kids outside to play. So I compromise with this as well. But when the weather is always raining you don't really want to go riding. It's crappy riding in foul weather. It's cold. And being from Southern California I like the warmth. So we feed and care for the horses everyday of the year and only ride them about five months out of the year (and sadly, that is a pretty generous number!). If I had a covered arena I'd ride more. Which is why we are taking the kids riding each week at a covered arena. It's the only way they will get ridden.

Today I'm especially chilled. I can't seem to get warm enough today. So I'm trying to build a fire in the wood-stove to help heat the house up tonight. Unfortunately we don't have dry wood to build a fire every night. Or I would! We went through our dry wood in about two months. Dropped our electric bill drastically! But now we are back to heating with our heater. Not my favorite thing to heat with because it has to constantly run to make the house feel warm. It's a good movie day. Just hangout, eat popcorn and watch some movies. My husband took off to work today saying he has stuff to catch up on. So it's just me and my kiddos hanging out trying to keep warm. I just sent them outside to try and gather some dry wood (which probably is impossible since we had rain all last week - torrential downpours really). But wood will only get dry eventually if it's brought in out of the rain. Hoping for one nice cozy warm night tonight with the little bit of dry wood we have... and I'll dream of my summer trips camping.