riding ponies

The kids spent 3 days riding ponies this week at "Het Gulden Spoor" (the golden spur) and learned a ton. By the end of the week they could tell you everything about the 8 ponies, including their colorful names, like Einstein, Edison, Galileo, Freud, and Noble. In this photo, Phoebe is with Newton and Alex is with Tom.

Phoebe is the horse lover in the family and has been dying to ride for a year, but we had to find a club that had ponies since horses shouldn't be ridden until kids are at least 7. You can see here that she's in heaven with Newton. She never stopped talking to her pony, even when she was riding him, and also when her teacher was trying to give her instruction!

Alex is a little more nervous around ponies (and animals in general) and learned a valuable lesson. When she's nervous the pony can sense it and won't listen to her. I'm hoping that after another week or two with the ponies, she'll be able to get over her fear and enjoy the ride. Then she should be able to move on to riding horses. Pretty soon they'll be talking 3 languages: english, dutch and horsey!