Ideas of Grandeur or “Angels Watchin’ Over Me”

So, we’re in the field. Horses all around. Food between my feet. Four kids under my “wings”. Big, huge horse right behind me.

Breathing in my ear.

The big huge horse [pic taken later].

Aloud.

Like I said yesterday, I was never scared. Not at all. Scared my kids were scared, but not actually scared.

But I prayed, in a nice, calm voice. “Dear Jesus, please send your angels to stand around us [the horse behind me never moved] and to make the horses back off some.”

Sure enough. Within thirty seconds, several of the horses had started to amble away.

I prayed again. And again. With less immediate results but soon enough there was a bit of breathing room.

While standing by the tree, this is the furthest away as I could get and still take a pic.

Except for that sucker right behind us.

Who sniffed my 11yo’s rear end.

Or so she said.

She said it was weird ;).

There was a clear path toward the “road” leading back to the fence/gate and the van. By road, I mean tracks in the grass [see the satellite picture for our egress route].

I don’t know if I did the right thing or not, but here’s what we did.

My older two girls are very responsible. They don’t generally scare easily and, especially in a situation like this, they do what they’re told.

Our tree. We stood on the right/north side of it.

So, I told them to stay together, walk back the way we came, slowly, calmly and… go. They did just that. One or two of the horses took a few steps after them, but ultimately, they weren’t followed.

My plan had been for the other three of us to follow a minute later, but as soon as we started moving the rest of the horses did, too.

Including the big fellow behind me. [Yes, a fellow. There was… visual evidence of that later.]

So we stopped. I kept my arms around the kids. Decided to tell them to try to go, just like my other two, but after they got about ten feet, I had them stop. The horses were a bit too interested. If the two of them had been left completely alone, they would have been fine, but I didn’t trust them enough not to scare.

[As I write this, an hour or so after we got home, I’m sore. My legs hurt [I’d injured one over the weekend anyway], my shoulders are carrying tension in them still, and my arms and legs are sore [or more so] from being still and tense the whole time.]

X marks our tree.
Backwards along green arrows for kids’ egress.

We ended up near this tree. I’d been hoping the horses wouldn’t follow us there, but they did [there was a path there too but I couldn’t see it until after we got over there]. That big horse? Yep, right next to me still. Or in front of me. Depending on the moment. Other horses all around. After a few minutes, me and the two littles ended up back to the tree, big horse right in front of us.

I saw my older two girls coming back a couple of times [we really weren’t FAR from the fence/van, but far enough and out of the line of sight]. Firmly and loudly enough they could hear, I told them to go back. Over the fence. Stay put. We won’t mention how many times I had to say that. I even heard a bit of “Marco! Polo!” going on…

My 7yo LOVES horses. The girl is all about them. Last year, she even got a horseback riding lesson for her birthday.

7yo at her first [and only, to date] riding lesson a year or so ago.

She was pretty calm the whole time. She had her cowgirl hat with her and the horses were a bit too interested in that at times. My 5yo wasn’t scared, but I think he was born with ants in his pants. In that moment, however, he stayed still. Mostly.

Tomorrow: Angel With Hooves

For size comparison purposes. Guy on the left is the one standing behind me. The one on the right is smaller. That’s all I’m sayin’ 🙂
Big horse.