Every family struggles with juggling all the kid activities, parent hobbies, jobs, volunteering, and so on.  Our family is no different.  It is easy to add on one more thing here, and there, after all, that activity is only 1 hour each week.  Some of the hardest decisions are the ones where you stop doing something and draw back.  We have been having a lot of discussions about this lately.  Obviously, we invest a lot of time and money into our agricultural activities, and in particular, with the horses.  However, as we have added one more thing here and there, we reduce our available time to ride the horses, keep them in shape, and help the kids improve in their riding.

Therefore, we made some tough decisions this week (the kids did get included in the choices).  Alex is stepping out of Boy Scouts.  That was a hard choice since I grew up in Boy Scouts, but I think this is the right choice for Alex and for the family.  Also, Vicki will be ending her participation in Girl Scouts.  I sold my wood working tools because I don’t have time to use them for big projects any more (it has been almost 4 years since I did a real project).

Instead, we are choosing to focus the family on our farm activities, the core of which, is horses.  Both Alex and Vicki will be attending 4-H camp this summer, and will be taking a goat with them for Goat Week.  They will also be riding in at least one Pony Club horse camp.

Sometimes, you have to just draw a line in the sand and re-focus things.  For us, horses are THE Main Thing, and we just have to make sure to keep that priority at the top.