Crooks Family, A bakers Dozen :)

Life continues to be busy in our ever growing family! We got home from China and had a wonderful Christmas here in Seattle. What fun it was to watch a 7 year old experience her first Christmas. She thinks Santa is the coolest thing ever! In January Holly celebrated her 4th birthday and Sophie celebrated her 5th. How time flies!!! In February we packed up 6 kids (Catherine flew down for a week as well) and 11 horses and moved down to Thermal CA (near Palm Spring) for 5 weeks of show jumping competition. The competition went very well for our Grand Prix horse, young horses, and our clients, so we were pleased with those results. A lot of hard work and training all winter paid off for the horses, and it always feels great when hard work pays off! The kids all had a great time as well! The horse show grounds run a wonderful little school for the trainers kids so Ciara, Hunter, Ruby, and Kai all enjoyed that. Our good friends rented a condo near the show grounds and were kind enough to let us invade their pool and hot tub, and then another friend let the kids use his hotel pool (equiped with multiple water slides) so there was no shortage of water fun! Add to that our trips to cool places like the Living Desert Zoo, the Sultan Sea, and Legoland, and you can imagine the abundant laughter! Mike and I wondered what Ruby would think of our nomadic horse show life and she loved it! She acted as if she, like the rest of our gang, had grown up in the sport. She really is amazing. Here are some pictures of the kids taken between Christmas and now.