G received a gift certificate from her Grama and Papa for horseback riding on her birthday (yeah, puppy & horseback riding and we haven't even touched on the expensive guitar her uncle gave her...). Today we redeemed that certificate.

G's bestest friends in the world, her two awesome cousins, her mom, two uncles, and Grama all participated. It took a while to saddle up the horses since there were 9 of us, but it was worth the wait. I forgot how high up you feel when you get on those mighty beasts. It was like breathing in thinner air. G was so excited that she kept yelling, "I feel like I'm gonna have a heart attack!!" One by one we mounted the horses and waited until everyone was ready, then it was off and away on our trail ride. I was a little nervous because it's been about 15 years since I've been on a horse and they kept mentioning things like, "IF the horse does this or that you need to pull the reigns in HARD with all your might." Uhhhh.... I thought these were really well broken in horses?? But they turned out just fine. There were a couple of fidgety ones but for the most part they tolerated us pretty well.

Here's Uncle T on his big boy nicknamed "WidowMaker." Tanner was his real name and he was kind of out of shape but the only horse they had who could muscle T's weight, so up he went.

Tanner didn't much care for his heavy burden, T felt like he was trying to buck him off the whole time. And at one point Tanner jumped and slid on the hill when the dog that was leading us cut through the middle of our group and startled him. Yikes! After that T was white-knuckled and nervous. But he's still alive so all is well that ends well, right?

G looks so happy here...it makes me wish we had horses in our backyard and we could do this every day.

It was a pretty low-key ride. The most exciting thing for me was when our horses started trotting on the way back because they were eager to be done with us. :) So I'll just leave you with some pictures that Grama was able to capture.