Aiden the Cowboy

John's company had their 10th anniversary BBQ this past Saturday at the Lake Oswego Hunt Club. It was going to be child friendly and they had mentioned "pony rides" for the kids, so we decided that it would be a fun family thing to do. John's company is pretty small and over the past two years, I've met enough of the employees and their wives that I feel like they're a good group of people to spend an afternoon with.

We had told Aiden that there would be pony rides and he was quite excited. What we didn't realize was the the "pony" was actually the full-grown horse of one of the co-owners of the company. Luckily, the horse was super calm and used to being around children. The guy's daughter, who is the one who rides the horse, showed Aiden how to feed him and where to pet him. The horse seemed to really like Aiden! Aiden did really well at not making any loud noises or sudden moves and was being very gentle.

After a while, Janelle (the daughter) put the saddle on Wings (the horse) and told Aiden that she was getting the horse ready for riding and that Aiden would get a ride in just a little bit. Aiden was pretty excited about that, but was able to entertain himself during the waiting period.
We assumed that Aiden was excited about it in theory, but figured that once we attempted to put him up on this huge animal, he'd get scared and wouldn't want to do it.

It was finally time for Aiden's horse ride and he was still acting pretty excited as he made his way over to the horse. We put the little riding helmet on him, I walked him over to Wings, and asked him if he was doing alright. He announces, "Yes mommy, I'm going to ride the horse!". So I lift him up onto this huge horse and he perches himself up there, places his feet in the stirrups, and grabs onto the reins. He's going to ride this horse ALONE! Janelle holds onto the horse to lead him and tells Aiden to get ready for the horse to start walking.

She begins to lead the horse around and Aiden gets the biggest smile on his face and starts yelling, "YEEHAW!!!". No joke - he yelled "YEEHAW!!" every 30 seconds for the entire ride. It cracked up everyone from the company as his yells echoed across the small valley. About halfway through his ride, he looks at me and yells, "Look at me, mommy! I'm a cowboy!! YEEHAW!!!". It was definitely one of those moments that will bring a smile to my face for a long time.

Once he was done, he got down and we told him to say thank you to Wings - "Thank you, Wings!" - and then to say thank you to Janelle....this is when he proudly says, "Thanks Cowboy Mom!". This poor girl is about 17 or 18 and she laughed so hard she couldn't talk for a few minutes. After we had all stopped laughing, I explained that Aiden has been calling all older females "mom" (unless he is very familiar with their real names or titles, like "teacher" or "grandma") and in this case, he had just differentiated her as the "cowboy mom".

After his ride, we all took a tour of the stables and met some very pretty horses. Nathan was having a fun time looking at all the horses. He went to every horse and would say, "Hi dog!". I kept reminding him that it was a horse, which he would repeat for one or two horses after that, but would then revert back to calling them "dogs".
The boys had a great time and sadly, we didn't take our camera and my cell phone battery had died on the way there, so I couldn't use that camera either. Once it was time to leave, we told Aiden to say bye to all the horses and he burst into tears and then cried the whole way home. I think we've got a horse lover on our hands. Maybe we'll just have to bribe Aiden's auntie Laura to let him see her horse every once in a while. :^)