July 4th Parade and Fireworks!

On the 4th of July we decided to go to a parade in Menan, ID. It was a pretty small parade, but we were all excited to go.

It was a pretty warm day.

Kara wants to see if she can ride in the parade the next time we are in town for the 4th.

They were pretty thrilled to have candy thrown at them.

After the parade, we walked over to enjoy the festivities in the park.

We had lunch at the food trucks, and then decided to head home for the rest of the afternoon.

Jason drove out from Oregon and the girls were so happy to see him.

Ben took the girls out on the 4 wheeler to chase the poor cows around.

Victor and Nancy also came over for dinner, and the kids had fun being reunited with their cousins.

Especially Evie and Whitney!

I'm sure Nancy has a good shot of this, and I just snuck one in quick from the side.

After dinner, we drove down the road a bit to find a good fireworks spot.

It was a pretty good show. Ben made such a big deal about how small it was compared to Idaho Falls, so I wasn't expecting much, but it was great.

We went back to Papa's and did the rest of our fireworks that we got in Wyoming. They were not super great, but the kids sure had fun!

Riding Day!

The girls have rally been looking forward to riding horses with Papa. And Kerry has been working with the horses to get them used to being tethered together so the girls could ride by themselves instead of in his lap.

Kiersten was the most nervous. She did great though.

He led her around in the corral first until she got comfortable on the horse.

Then they went out and rode around the pasture.

Evie got to go next, and she is the one I was worried about. She is such a wiggler, and gets spastic sometimes. It was kinda funny to see her sitting up there all wobbly-bobbly.

I thought he might just keep her inside the corral, but she took it seriously, and tried to sit up straight as she could on the horse.

So out they went. I had a hard time watching her, and couldn't help imagining her tumbling over the side. So I don't have a lot of pictures of her, haha. But she did fine, even when her horse got nervous of the cows. Papa made sure she got back okay.

She and Kiersten both rode with a rope connecting their horse to Papa's horse so he could control them when needed.

Kara was pretty impatient for her turn, but it was worth the wait. She got to ride by herself with no lead rope. She sure is confident, and not scared at all. She just hops right up, and assumes she knows just what to do. I was never like that at her age.

She truly enjoys riding. I'm glad she's such a natural. I'm still kinda scared of the cows, let alone the horses!

She helped Papa put the horses away after the ride.

Kara got to get up early one morning and go for a ride in the desert with just her and Papa. He was nice to take a couple of pictures of her. She said it was really exciting. She only got nervous once when her horse sort of reared up, but she stayed on and the horse calmed right down.