Posted in family
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I have made no secret on this blog that our family struggles with household chores. Our house is usually pretty clean and tidy, but the getting there can be sheer torture. I have implemented all sorts of strategies from fridge magnets, to various forms of earning allowance, to complicated, color-coded systems, to bodily torture and death threats. While some of those work better than others, none have really been THE answer to getting my kids to happily and efficiently complete their chores. But now I think I've got it. I need to purchase a few horses and place them around the house. One in each of their rooms, one for the kitchen, and a couple of miniature varieties for the bathrooms. Then I would have a clean house and happy kids to boot. You see, earlier this month on our vacation, we stopped by to visit Big D's youngest sister Susan who lives not far from the cabins we frequent, and our kids spent a little extra time there with her before joining us later in the week. Susan has been regularly helping out a friend with her horses which are boarded in a local stable, and she thought it might be fun to get the kids to help out....
Good luck, I thought, since mopping the kitchen floor will send either one into hysterics. They will never willingly muck out a nasty horse stall. But I do promise that they will not smoke while on the premises. That I can guarantee! I was dead wrong (about the mucking...not the smoking). Just look at these happy faces...
Even Big D pitched in a bit, minus the happy face...
Here's a shot taken after someone said, "Hey Kellie! Why don't you grab a pitchfork and come muck a stall too!"...
Ahh...that was a good one! We laughed and laughed...especially Susan. She knows me well. It's not that I don't like horses. I actually think they are quite beautiful and majestic and all of that crap...
Ya' know, it's probably the crap that turns me off. Turd piles the size of a cat do not appeal to me. And speaking of cats...
If memory serves me correctly, this fellow's name was Oscar, and I spent a good bit more time playing with him and his friends than hanging around the horse stalls. Annaleigh managed to sneak in a few purrs between shovels full of urine-drenched hay...
She also managed a few moments with an unidentified leaf-shaped bug...
Any ideas on what that is? If it wasn't featured in the movie A Bug's Life, then I'm clueless. I also spent a good amount of time questioning this little woman, the horse owner....
...but not about horses, of course. No, I was much more interested in the years she spent being the personal trainer to Brian Urlacher, a current, highly successful linebacker for my Chicago Bears. How interesting to hear that he was quite skinny when he first came to Dianne at the University of New Mexico.
Really?! Since I wear his jersey every Sunday throughout the fall, it was interesting to find out some tidbits about him before he was tearing up Soldier Field and making Vitamin Water commercials with Carrie Underwood and having biceps that are the size of my thighs. And now I must go wake up my children so they can start their chores. Anyone know where I can get a handful of horses to make the medicine go down? |
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