On Saturday I went with the family to their Horsepark. The parents were having a party for all their friends and brought in a chef to cook a really nice dinner for all the guests. The food was really good, with awesome appetizers, salad, chicken, steak, potatoes, and some sort of Strawberry dessert with some tart white foamy stuff on top. I have no idea what it was, but I wish I did so I could make it in the future. We stayed the night there, which was nice. Although I will say it's a good thing I have lived in India and experienced nights with no air conditioning in 120+ degree heat, because I got to relive the experience all over again. But I'll be honest and say that it wasn't nearly that bad, because it was probably only about 80 degrees... Still a little too warm for my taste. I generally like to turn the air conditioning down as low as it will go at night and then make a little nest for myself of pillows and down comforters and snuggle on down. Anyway, enough of my sleeping habits. Here are some pictures of the park. This first horse is named Denny. He's super nice.

That's Magda petting Denny. (I'm assuming that's how you spell his name, but it's probably actually some Czech word that's spelled entirely differently). And here is part of Horsepark. The Stables are to the right, and the big riding area (horse people out there, what are those called?) is straight ahead.

While they were getting ready for the party, Martina (the mom) asked me to take the girls on a walk down to a nearby lake. I did not anticipate this little walk being anything more than just a calm little outing to get the girls out of their parents hair while they were getting things done. That turned out to be a mistake, haha. Here are some photos from our walk:

The nice little dirt path we were told would lead us straight to the lake took us past a forest, but just at the end of the forest, the path had completely overgrown. Not wanting to get ticks and other such bugs all over us, we decided to just walk through the field next to the path which looked like it wasn't currently in use. This worked pretty well....

Magda wanted a picture of her blowing the seeds of the dandelion. They kept saying "Yay! We're helping to grow plants!" I neglected to tell them that most people would view these lovely little plants as weeds, haha.

So at the end of the field we could say the lake we were supposed to be going to, but through some pretty impenetrable thickets. Hm. Well that idea didn't work out so well in the end. But after a little searching we found a path that some tractor or truck had cleared between our field and an adjacent one. Perfect. Until we all got about ten steps down the path and encountered some mud. We thought "eh, it's not that bad, we'll just jump over it and be on our merry way". Wrong. It ended up being deep mud that sunk around our shoes and stole them from our feet. At this point, covered in mud, we really had no choice but to keep going and hopefully make it to the lake so we could erase the evidence of our little escapade through the mud. Luckily I decided early on to carry Barbara just in case, so it was just me, Anna, and Magda who got covered. I was wearing sandals, so the mud was literally flicked all the way up to my knees. Anna and Magda escaped with just their shoes getting muddy luckily. After crossing another field and a small village (with our shoes and feet being stared at, haha), we made it to a small stream leading into the lake and were able to wash our shoes, feet, and legs off.

Putting their wet shoes and socks back on after cleaning them off.

But I'm glad we kept going, because there were some pretty sweet views to be seen.

From left to right: Magda, Barbara, Anna. Madga's name is actually Magdalena, which is Madeline in Czech. So we have the same name! She's a pretty cool kid to share the name with, so I'm digging the name buddy. :)

On the way back we decided to try our luck going through the town to avoid the mud. It took a lot longer than taking the path would have and we ended up having to carry Barbara half the time, but we made it back to Horsepark (fairly) clean.

They have sheep at Horsepark! Sheep are hilarious creatures.

Here's Denny again, with their pony Roger in the background. Roger is a sweetheart and will start to nod off and go to sleep when you pet him, haha. He has this awesome 'fro, and people say he looks like Micheal Jackson, which I can kind of see. So funny!

See the Michael Jackson resemblance?

And here is the courtyard of Horsepark. The building to the left next to where I'm taking the photo is the dining area/kitchen. Next to that (clockwise) is the stable, then the supply barn area. Next to that, where I am standing is the offices/rooms for staying the night.