Cora's day with us

When school is out, Cora visits us every other Tuesday.  A while back she said she wanted us to have a picnic sometime, and since we saw it was supposed to be in the 90's for the next two weeks, it seemed as though this Tuesday was the day to go.  We usually don't do a lot when Cora's here, and it surprises me that she still wants to come, but we are glad she does.  Any other eleven-year-old child would be bored to death at our house.

Just to be doing something a little different, we decided to go to Fort Osage for the picnic; it's only about 12 miles from home.  There's not really a lot to it, but that's a good thing, because neither of Cliff nor I can do a lot of walking, due to my knees and Cliff's hip and breathing problems.  I managed to climb some stairs with Cora, though, so I could take pictures.

Cliff climbed upstairs with us here, so we could look down on the Missouri River.  There was a canoe race going on that goes from Kansas City to Saint Louis; this is the 19th year for the race.

By the way, we had our picnic as soon as we got there.  

When we got back home, she did what she really wanted to do, which was to spend time with Thelma and Louise, the goats.  The daughter, Louise, wasn't very tame, and Cora wanted to teach her how to be friendly.  She's used to messing with horses, and does barrel races; she's now learning to rope calves.  I've been pretty picky about people opening the gate to the goats pen because they meet everyone at the gate and try to sneak around them.  However, as I told Cora, I feel I can trust her to shut gates because she's always been around farm animals and knows it's something you have to be careful about.

Obviously, she made a friend out of Louise:

Here's what Cora looked like when we first started babysitting her.

We are so proud of her!  And she isn't even related to us.