Family Fun Night -

There is an equestrian center that is not too far from our house, and every Saturday night from May-September they have “Saturday Night Lights”. I am no equestrian expert so please forgive me if I butcher this explanation, but basically every Saturday evening there are various horse competitions. On this particular Saturday there were horse jumping competitions and since we’d never been, we decided to take the kids and have an evening family field trip.

We loaded the kids in the car and took off. They had no clue where we were going.

You guys. It was a blast! We will for sure be going back.

They have ALL kinds of family friendly (FREE!) activities going on outside of the stadium – clowns riding unicycles and blowing bubbles, hula hoops, a mechanical bull, a carousel, pony rides, and face painting. This was right up my girls alley.

This is the setup of the horse jumping course. (No idea if that is what you call it, but that’s the best I can come up with.) As we walked in, we got a paper that showed us the correct order that the horses were supposed to jump the gates in. It was fun to watch. We learned that it’s a little like golf for a spectator. When the next horse comes out, it gets incredibly quiet while you watch them go through the gates. And then everyone claps and yells. It honestly was impressive!

So these next couple of pictures are some of my favorites and let me tell you why. Kate suffers from terrible allergies. TERRIBLE. When she was a baby and toddler we honestly just thought she had the worst luck with colds. It seemed like she would never recover from one cold before she was catching another. And then there was the awful year-round night time cough. It was constant.

Around the age of 4, we found out she had allergy induced asthma. She was too young for allergy testing but through us just being aware of when she would have flare ups, we became convinced she was allergic to cats and dogs. After a horse riding lesson, we quickly added “horse” to the allergy list. When she turned 5 we took her in for formal allergy testing and found out she’s allergic to everything under the sun that is outside- all weeds, grasses, pollens, etc. The worst offenders for her are dogs, cats and horses. What an annoying diagnosis for our animal loving kid.

We immediately started her on weekly allergy shots and a year and a half later, my kid was petting and sitting on a horse! To be safe, we wiped her legs and arms down with a wet wipe after these pictures, but y’all, we were at an EQUESTRIAN CENTER for hours and she was fine! So this is my PSA of how much we love allergy shots. 🙂