Fun on the Farm

Since last fall Makenzie has been asking me to go on a mommy-daughter date with her to see real horses. Well there are horses all around here in the fields going up through the mountains on the way to our neighborhood so I always joke around and tell her we are on our date and there are her horses. (that hasn't quite worked so she added the clause that she needed to feed them)

A few weeks ago the mom of one of my student's invited myself and my girls to come to their home and see her 10 new baby chicks that had just hatched. I excitedly said we could come the next day after Makenzie got out of school and told the mom that it might make up for me not taking Makenzie to see real horses. Then the mom told me she had REAL HORSES- 4 of them! She also had 2 pot belly pigs in her backyard! We were definitely going now!

I let it be a surprise and didn't tell Makenzie what we were doing when I picked her up from school the next day. We dropped by the grocery store on the way and bought a 5 pound bag of apples (I remember feeding apples to the horses next to my grandpa Smart's house) and Kendyl picked out a bouquet of flowers to give as a thank you. Makenzie pretended to be a detective and kept going over all her information that we had slipped to her. She knew we were going somewhere that she had never been, that is was someone she didn't know- but Kendyl and I did, she knew we needed apples and flowers for a thank you and within a minute she guessed it exactly. She bounced all the way there after that (which thankfully was only another 3 or 4 minutes and freaked out when I turned the wrong way and got us lost for a second).

There were 10 baby chicks in all these bright colors. The week before they hatched they were injected with a little color dye so that when they hatched they would be all bright spring colors. It doesn't hurt them at all. It only dyes their baby fluff and when they lose that for their grown up feathers it will be gone. The mom put them in this big bucket with a warm light above them and keeps them in her kitchen. Kendyl was pretty scared of them most of the time, but Kenzie wanted to hold each one.

Then we went into their backyard and fed their horses a huge bag of carrots and their pigs an entire bag of apples. Kendyl was scared of the horses and pigs too :) but wasn't scared of the swing set or tractor.

To say Makenzie was in heaven would be an understatement. She ran all around the barn climbing on haystacks and jumping all around. My student's mom invited Makenzie back to come ride the horses when her husband would be back in town or sometime this summer. Sometimes I think Makenzie should have been born on a farm. We're so grateful for this sweet family and sharing themselves with us. It sure made our day.