Introducing...

Sikpela. (Shee-kpay-lah) Explanation of her name to follow...

This is Buck's Christmas present this year! Yes, we now have a horse. I'm still a little shocked by this statement. So here's the story; Buck has a really great co-worker who has a field and a barn and all that and some horses of her own, but one of them wasn't broke.  Buck used to work on a ranch and train/break horses so he offered to train her horse for her.  She said that she couldn't afford to pay him, but he didn't care because he just wanted to work with horses again.  She did however tell him that if he ever got a horse then he could keep it there at her barn free of charge, and we would just pay for the feed/hay.

Well Buck never thought he would take her offer.  Then a few weeks later out of the blue my dad called and said one of his neighbors was giving away a yearling colt Palamino Paint, for free, and wanted to know if we wanted it.  We talked about it and at first felt that it wouldn't work and wasn't a good idea right now, but we agreed we would pray about it for a few nights.  Well everything fell right into place and we felt pretty good about it, and next thing we know, we have a brand new horse.  I've never had a horse before, but I'm pretty excited to raise our kids with horses.

Now as for the backstory of her name...so Buck has always liked the Lakota Sioux Indian language (it's the same language Kevin Costner learns from his Indian friends on the movie, Dances With Wolves, if that helps) and he said that he's always wanted to name a horse something in that language. So we googled it and found a translator and messed around with it for a while, finally deciding on Sikpela. It means Muskrat in english. Ha ha ha, c'mon now, those of you who know my husband well, did you expect anything different, really? Anyways, we're going to call her Kepayla for short, and I do have to say it's really grown on me.

This is Kallan's first time meeting Kepayla

She's not even haulter/lead rope broke yet, but she let's Buck pet her.  He's going to start training her this summer

Buck is beside himself excited about this, and I have pretty good feelings about her.  It's something we can do as a family and maybe one day in the future even have more. I'm glad my kids will be able to grow up with horses.  So Merry Christmas to Buck! :)