Close to my Heart

Yes, this is my fat butt on a horse, but this is the horse that is close to my heart right now.  Dummy is his name...yes what a name he has.  This is my grandpa's horse.  My grandpa--Robert Bluemel--was by far my absolute favorite grandpa in the world.  He died when I was a freshman in high school...14 years ago.  What a horrible sad day that was. :*(   I don't know why, but my grandpa has been close to my heart this year.  I miss him more than ever.  Maybe it's because he was so great, and now I have children and I am so sad that they never got the chance to know him.  I know for a fact if he was alive, my little Aubrey Jo would be his right hand man, she would go with him everywhere and help him with the horses and love every minute of it.  You see while growing up, my grandpa came down to our house every day.  Just about every single day.  He used to pull up to the house at the ranch and honk the horn (he never got out and came in...he just waited until we came to the door) He was such a big part of our life.  We did everything with grandpa.  From the time I was a baby I am sure he had us on a horse.  He taught me everything I know about horses. I remember as a really little girl I used to get on the horses that he was trying to break (because I was always that kid that was easy going and did whatever they asked me to for the most part) grandpa used to get on a horse and put me on the horse that he was trying to break and he'd have it right up close to him with a lead rope and off we would go.  I learned from him (after being bucked off in the corral and landing face first in horse crap) that if you fall off, you get right back on again.  Oh and he made you do it.  Even if you were scared to death and crying, he would make you get right back on the horse.  I learned so much from him, and I miss him so very much.  When I was a little girl, we had a horse named "ginger" and she was the kid horse that we all got to ride.  She had a colt, and that colt was dummy.  My grandpa thought he was stubborn and dumb so he called him dummy.  But he was grandpa's horse.  "Ol' Dum" was a nickname for him.  He would always want to go straight to the barn.  No matter what direction you took him he'd want to turn right around and head straight for the barn.   I have not ridden a horse since I got married 9 years ago, and I know that dummy is getting old.  When I saw my uncle stan, I had to ask him how dummy was doing.  It's so hard for me to go down and see him, because it makes me cry, but when stan said that he was down in the field I just had to go see him.  This was the first time my girls got to meet dummy.  They got to ride my grandpa's horse.  This was also the first time that my girls got to ride a horse all by themselves.  They thought they were pros after riding around for 5 minutes! They have so much to learn, but I want to teach them all about horses and all of what I know, I want my grandpa to be remembered, I want them to know what a great grandpa he was, I never want the memory of him to die.  This day was a special day with a horse close to my heart that I will remember forever <3    Aubrey and I on Dummy (and yes I know the stirrups are beyond short for me here, lol) Aubrey on peaches, and lindsay on dummy, and princess, the pony walking along side of them.  Lindsay on Dummy giving him a drink of water in the riverAubrey on Peaches, another horse we had when we were young...this was Misty's horseThis is a classic picture that cracks me up, I remember being a little girl like this and riding the horses, and not having my feet long enough to fit in the stirrups, and you would raise your legs as high as you can and kick them as hard as you can to get them to go, but they really didn't even feel your kick through the saddle!  Aubrey was trying so hard, but she just couldn't kick her hard enough!