Bunny Trails: Great Christmas Eve's, past and present

Growing up it was all about Christmas Eve, that's when we opened presents. Needless to say that made for along day for my mom since we started to beg to open presents, oh pretty much the minute we woke up. After we got horses my mom started strongly encouraging us to take a ride, a LONG ride, on Christmas Eve.

I have really fond memories of a Christmas Eve when I was about 15.

This is what Quincy and I looked like back then.

That particular morning my mom told us to take a long ride and as a means of encouraging us to be gone through lunch she gave us a can of Big Franks (vegetarian hot dogs) and a can opener. My brother Jesse decided he could live without this adventure but Matt (13), Hope (10) and I headed outside to catch and saddle our horses.

We decided that we should do a 30 mile loop up in the mountains. A little side note, we lived in Covelo California and had the perfect place to condition, too bad I didn't know about endurance then :) Anyway we figured that was a perfect way to spend Christmas Eve. We would ride most of the day and get back in time to take care of chores and warm up before dinner and presents.

We had a blast. It was gray winter day with a dusting of snow on the ground, more up in the mountains. When lunch rolled around I was planning to eat our big franks cold but Matt had another idea. We dismounted, found a place to water our horses and tie them up and he set to work trying to find things to start a fire with. I being the oldest and always worried about following the rules told him that I didn't know that we should do that. We might get in trouble if someone came along. Matt has this little “pshaaaa” noise he makes at me when he feels I'm being ridiculous. He proceed to tell me how of course no one would ever know. He was going to have to work to find wood dry enough to burn and a spot (under a big tree) where it was dry enough to start a fire, so of course he wasn't going to light a forest fire. And further more no one was going to be out and about in the middle of nowhere on a cold, gray Christmas Eve.

So he lit a fire and we roasted our veggie dogs, spent some time warming up and relaxing by our fire, surrounded by snow, and just had a great time telling tales and laughing.

After a while we put out our fire and continued on our way, this time mostly down the mountain. I remember my sister complaining about her toes being cold and us very compassionately telling her to stop complaining.

It was the perfect way to spend Christmas Eve! We got home just as it was starting to get dark, did our chores, ate supper and opened gifts.

Through the years I've tried to ride on as many Christmas Eve's as possible, often with family and friends. As an adult no one is begging me to take off for the whole day and not come back till dark. Too bad really, growing up and having to make a living can really get in the way of your fun. But I still get to ride, thanks to a wonderful mom and in-laws. So although I don't get to ride all day today, I do get to ride for a bit and that makes my day!

This Christmas Eve my kids got to ride too and watching them enjoy it was great! Larissa asked if she could ride with a heartrate monitor and trot the whole time. Unfortunately it's muddy so she had to walk. That girl just might grow up to be an endurance rider.