a fun day at R.O.C.K.

Richard and I volunteer at a place called R.O.C.K.. It stands for "Ride On Center for Kids." The website is http://www.rockride.org/ . They have hippotherapy - which has nothing to do with hippos. It is using a horse as a piece of equipment, essentially, to be used in physical, occupational, and speech therapy. The main population is kids, but there are patients of all ages. For those who do not need as intense of one-on-one therapy, there is also a 'therapeutic riding' option. This is where there are several students and one instructor (not therapist) in the area at a time (with a lot of volunteers to help with the students and horses).

While I am on a 'sebaticle' right now - because they do not allow pregnant women in the area, this is really something that we both enjoy and I hope to pursue as a career option one day. That will be after a seris of courses to be a physical therapist certified as a hippotherapist.

Today was their annual open house. We took Nathan and had a lot of fun. He has enjoyed going with Mama to watch Dada volunteer and work with the 'horseys', but he had a blast today playing lots of games and hanging out with Mom and Dad.

There was a train ride. He liked the train, but the 'engineer' with his long beard scared him.

Nathan like to pet the little Shetland pony - it was more his sized.

We took a 'western' photo - really hokey, but we just had to.

Nathan and Dada were barrel racing, but Nathan prefered to finish the race hand-in-hand. That is my boy!! (you can see the 'barrel' behind them in the second picture - it was a course of 5 gallon buckets)