Wide Open Spaces

**not sure why my pictures weren't displaying this afternoon. they were showing this morning. you should be able to see them now.**

Ty and I headed to our hometown this weekend to celebrate his mom's birthday. We stayed with my family Friday night and had a great time catching up with everyone. Our parents live less than 10 minutes from each other. It is so nice to be able to see everyone in one trip.

Ty's Dad is a veterinarian and has a big clinic and lots of land. There are always different animals around their property. There are usually some horses around and I have always wanted to ride them. But for some reason never have. I guess there is always too much activity going on at his house, although you would think that I would have sometime over the last decade.

Doug was excited that someone wanted to ride the horses and saddled up three of them for him, Ty and me to ride. This was my first time on a horse since I was a little girl.
Yes, I am wearing skinny jeans and a ruffled top and Ty is wearing plaid shorts. We are definitely city folk now!

I rode on Bulldozer.

I wish I would have taken my camera with me, but I wasn't too sure how I would handle it all. And let's face it my pants are too tight to fit anything in my pocket. It was a gorgeous day and the land was beautiful and I was sad that I didn't have my camera.

Toward the end we herded some cattle from one field to another.
{okay, so I just hung back, but I was there!}

My goodness I was sore that night and the next day. (and still today.) It was a lot of fun and I hope we have time to do it again on our next visit.

Riding around on the golf cart
We went out to the wildlife refuge and had a picnic. Ty and I bought his mom this oilcloth table cloth for her birthday.

I'm not much of a hiker, but we did have a good time!

Ty is one of four children. Not everyone could be there for the weekend, but his younger sister and her husband made it. They got married at the end of July. Now all of his siblings are married. The original four kids plus the four in-laws all mesh so well and we always have so much fun together.

Jesse and I took an in-law picture.
Isn't this the most akward picture ever?! haha!

Ty with his mom and sister.

The beautiful sunset we saw from the top of the "mountain." Mountains in my state are pretty small, but a mountain nonetheless.

Please note that we were at the top of the mountain when the sun set. It was a pretty dim hike down. Lots of memories were made on that hike! :)

We had a great trip home on Sunday with a couple of fun stops that I will post about tomorrow.