Riding Horses

On Sunday my family took a trip to the Northgate Equestrian Center where we rode horses. Our neighbor, Tiffany, let us ride two horses. I learned proper horse technique like how not to make the horse so angry it will flip you off it and how to not fall off when you're riding and break bones. Luckily I had a pretty good teacher so I only had some minor injuries like the horse jamming me against the railing so my skin scraped off and stuff like that. Other than that I had a fun time as you can see in the picture. I learned how to steer the horse and go in circles. It was very fun!

Devil Mountain Pentathlon

This Saturday I went to a swim meet in Clayton at the Dana Hills pool. It was called Devil Mountain Pentathlon.

As the name suggests, the swimmers have to swim five events. It is a test of a swimmer's endurance. It is also a test of how bored I can get. I was so bored at the meet. There are a lot of fast swimmers but a whole lot more slow ones that make the meet run slow! Anna did swim exceptionally fast considering that she had to swim so much. The whole time I was playing with Tyler or reading this great new book called The Last Olympian. I guess it was better than sitting around the house the whole day!

This is Anna doing her fastest stroke, butterfly.

My Trip to Joshua Tree and Palm Desert

I want to tell you about my trip I took during Spring Break.

In April, my family and I drove down to Irvine, CA. During the trip, we drove with my grandma and grandpa to Joshua Tree National Park. It was supposed to be very windy while we were there; there were warnings about high wind speeds. I had an awesome time there!

We first drove around and saw a lot of cool rock formations like the ones above.

We were climbing on all the rocks. It was a lot of fun! After we spent some time at the rocks, we hiked a trail that lead around a lake.

Most of the lake was dried up; there was only a tiny lake of water. After that we had a picnic and drove to a place where there was a fantastic view of the San Andreas Fault. It was amazing!

After we left Joshua Tree, we drove to our hotel in Palm Desert. We were going to stay in a Marriott timeshare. That means that you can either stay in a room like you would in a regular hotel or you can purchase a room for certain days of the year and come there yearly. The hotel was broken into many buildings. We were staying in a room near one of the pools. After we dropped our stuff off in our room, we headed for the pool!

The pool was awesome!!! There was a waterslide (Grandma went on it) and a huge pool. We had tons of fun!

Our hotel room was very nice:

The next day we went to the puffed cereal factory. I know it seems like a weird place but I had a lot of fun there. I learned how they make puffed cereal with different equipment. It was very interesting! To explore different parts of the factory, we had to dress up as you see below:

I had a awesome trip to Palm Desert and Joshua Tree National Park and I hope that I am able to go back!!

Black Diamond Mines

On the Fourth of July my family (except Calvin), went to the Black Diamond Mines. The Black Diamond Mines are a Regional Preserve. They are located in Antioch. All of us had a fun time there. It was somewhat beautiful there. The only thing that was not enjoyable about the trip was that we got lost on a trail and we were almost late to our tour. Speaking of the tour, it was a lot of fun! We got to take a tour of a sand mine. Our tour guide, Jared, was very friendly. I had an awesome time!