Anything you can do...

M & C went up to Grandma and Grandpa's Friday night while Alex and I were moving loads, which timed out perfectly for one last ride on Romeo before he goes home for the winter.

While C was the one that got to ride, M refused to be left out of the fun.

Eventually C was able to get Romeo away from M and into the ring

Once up she had a great time in the ring with her second cousins who were also riding....
...and then she fell.

Reports are that she was down and upset for about a second before Paula got to her. And, being C, she was back up on Romeo again about 30 second later. Thank goodness Paula (who rode competitively and has been around horses her whole life) was the one to handle the even rather than me (who would have panicked and made everything worse).  She even made C a trophy that night:

If you ask C about the trophy she'll say that it's because she "bite the dust, but got back up!", and that means she's a real cowgirl. And she'll also tell you that she's fallen off a horse once, but Paula's fallen off 5 times :o)

If this is the year of being grateful, let me state for the record that there are just about a million things to be grateful for on this one. I'm grateful that everyone's okay. I'm grateful the girls are lucky enough to have the opportunity to have all of these great experiences. And I'm grateful to have two brave, tough, tenacious girls who want to go out and have them :o)