Burnt & Sore

I got a little more sun yesterday than I thought! I went into the bathroom last night before bed, I had worn a tank top all day and my arms turned into lobster claws! I was red as can be.. although today I dont feel overly burnt. My arms and legs are also a little sore, I worked my tail off all day yesterday in the yard, got in quite the workout and my yard is looking pretty good!

I took Edgar to the vet this morning, he has been lame for 4 weeks now and I was feeling the guilt of my friends saying "You HAVENT taken him to the vet yet!" I knew he just needed more time, but I figured I would spend some cash on him and get a professional opinion. He is not very lame anymore, and the vet confirmed that! lol She gave him a legend shot to help increase the viscosity of the joint flued and tendon fluid, we'll see if that helps. I figured spending a whopping $80 on the shot to treat what might be the problem would be cheaper than x-rays or nerve block tests to determine where exactly the issue was and then have to still spend $80 for the shot. The vet wants me to ride him for about 45 minutes to see how he does, if he gets stiff after the ride or worse the next day.. if he is the same, then I can continue to ride him, slowly increasing in time. So the vet says I can tell my friends that it was OK that I didnt take him in, he just needed time off like I had diagnosed. :)

So I am happy I get to start riding my horse again! It's been over a month!! I enjoyed riding Bandit, but I love my Edgar and have missed him. :)

Oh and Derek & I have decided (uugghhh) that we are going to get up at 5am and start doing the gym thing in the mornings so we have afternoon/evenings to ride the horses, work in the yard, shop for groceries etc.. We start tomorrow......

Saved by the... (not the bell!)

Saved by the.. Bunny!!

We opted to do some yard work today vs going riding although it was a perfect day for a ride! I was motivated to work on the yard, we just bought a cart to go behind our lawn mower and I wanted to use it, I had put it together on Saturday afternoon.

I was in the far back area of our yard, picking up branches and I noticed that Russell was being very curious and then he was following something.. so I look closer and he is following a baby bunny which quickly ducked into a patch of grass. I then noticed 2 more very cute little babies hopping along for shelter! I called to Derek and he picked them up and we put them in a box to figure out what to do.. I called the feed store and they indicated to me that they sounded far too small to be ready to be on their own, so Derek prodded the ground where they came out of their hole and OMGosh.. 3 more jumped out of the hole! So there were 6 little cute baby bunnies.

Here's Derek holding one

We put them all back into their little hole, which by the way was tiny.. I dont even know how the mom fit in there! One of them jumped out of the den into the grass patch. I had a great pic of one in the den, but the darn blog keeps rotating the picture sideways! Not sure what that is about

We finally decided to just leave them and I would just pick up sticks elsewhere (there were plenty more to get) and hope that mommy bunny would notice their home had been ramshackled somewhat and move them out of the yard. The dogs by this time had caught a whiff of them and wanted to completely disrupt their lives, so we locked the dogs out of the yard for the rest of the day and continued on with my yardwork. BTW later in the early evening I went to check on the bunny den, and they were gone... I'm pretty sure momma came along and saw her home was touched by humans and moved the babies. whew!

As we looked at the big mound of dirt/weeds in our backyard, we started to notice a lot of holes in the dirt, here are a couple pics of the holes and then the mound.

The bunnies we found today were not in this mound, they were behind the mound almost to the fence. They actually were very lucky, I drove the lawnmower within probably 1.5 feet of running over their home before I knew they were there!

We decided that we would have to definately landscape around some of those holes and maybe rename the mound.. "Hippity Hop Hill" or "Bunny Hill"... who knows, the holes are probably mole holes, but we like to think a colony of bunnies live inside our mound :) Weird thing is, the dogs have never really seemed at all interested in any of those holes, maybe its just cuz they have never really spent much time around that mound to notice that living creatures live in it.

Oh and some good news this evening.. my gramma is doing sooooo much better than when I went to visit her. She is smiling, eating, laughing, attempting to commincate with her jibberish and apparently she has even said some clear words lately, she has spoken atleast 2 times with distinct clear short statements. According to my aunt and to one of the employees at the home, she said "What the Hell" when her finger was poked with a needle and then this weekend when my aunts fiance asked if she thought he was good looking, she said "Oh yes!"

Amazing! I cant even describe how frail and sad and lonely she looked when I visited her last, it is so encouraging that she is doing this much better. She has not spoken clear words in years, apparently some of her medication has been eliminated which sounds like has been a great thing for my gramma! :) According to my aunt, hospice says that there is still danger of her choking or getting pnemonia and that she is still in a fragile state and may not last long, but the family and friends have a little more quality time left with her now. Here's a pic of her taken this weekend with my aunt.. I am just amazed, a couple weeks ago I said goodbye to her, hospice was called in and the next day she started to improve and is now looking this good!

Oakley Update

Just wanted to give a quick update on Oakley.. talked to Luanne (his trainer) last night, I talk to her a couple times a week and Oakley is doing GREAT!! She tells me she loves training him, that he is a great horse and praises how well he is coming along.. makes me feel good to have a nice solid horse that others can appreciate, especially a trainer! She has been letting her 7 year old daughter ride him (with my permission) and he is a perfect gentleman for her. Derek is going to have another lesson tonight, they are doing well together and I'm excited for the future rides. Oakley's been in training for almost 2 months, he has about a week left to go. He is ready to come home, I am looking forward to getting on him myself and "playing" around with what he knows now! :)

Anyways.. I just wanted to take a minute to brag about our Oakley, I put a lot of time and hours and energy into his groundwork and I just love that it has paid off. He's not perfect, he is still young and will probably have his moments, but I'm 100% glad he is back home with me and not still out on his lease. Things seem to always work out the way they are supposed to...
Oh and Derek has 35.5 hours of in-saddle time for the year and I'm at 32.5 hours.. YES he is beating me!!! He gets the advantage of taking lessons while I watch him ride, so I need to find a way to catch up on my hours.

Just another weekend

Derek & Oakley went out on their first trail ride on Saturday up in Anacortes. Oakley wanted to get a little amped up in the beginning of the ride, but I was able to help coach Derek on what to do to get Oakley to relax and get him refocused back on Derek.. It worked well and the 2 had an enjoyable ride. There was a long steady uphill section, we had to stop a couple times to let the horses catch their breath, it was very rocky in areas and apparently Oakley slipped at one point and went down on his chest, Derek's feet hit the ground and Oakley bumped his nose on the ground, but they recovered just fine and had a nice ride.

My friend Amber was able to ride with us, she rode Blackie Smalls..

Derek & Oakley...

Oh and here is our group of 14 for the ride (and a few horses with Oakley in the middle)

I had to ride Bandit again, which was fine. He's a good horse, a little hard headed at times, but enjoyable all the same. I think Edgar is about done with his limping, just the tail end of his soreness possibly hangin around.. I think I'll ride him this week and see how he does. I miss my horse! Bandit did rub while he was tied at lunchtime and put some pretty big gashes in my breast collar, which upset me a little, but I'm over it. It's just leather :)

Here's a pic of my new ride... Bandit! :)

Yesterday was spent more relaxing than working.. I did manage to drag myself out and get the push-mower started for the first time all year, got the back yard mowed. Tried to get the riding mower going, bought a new battery but I think we now need a spark-plug, it was trying to start. Its a perfect lawn mower for mowing the bumpy pasture, it has seen better days, but it still works, so that is great! I could NOT push mow my pasture, especially since our push mower is ALL push, it is not self-propelled.

I've been doing pretty good at the whole "workin out" deal.. I have yet to get a 5-day workout in, typically it is only about 3 days a week I get in with swimming and/or gym but its 3 days more per week than before! I felt like I had a crappy weekend, ate too much blah blah, but the scale this morning reflected 2 pounds lost, so I guess I didnt do too bad... I wonder if Edgar will notice the 6 pounds I've lost.. probably not! :)

Oh and Derek's birthday was this past Thursday, we had dinner at El Paraiso in Snohomish and then this weekend we got together with some friends/family and did dinner/movie, watched "I Love You, Man" it was pretty darn funny!

Here is my present to Derek, a handmade leather lopper holder and leather saw holder with his initials engraved in them.. I had her put D.R. F8 so I guess that is kinda funny that Derek is Doctor Fecht, but thats just how his initials work out.. maybe I should start callin him doc!

Caught off guard...

Well I was at work last week, doing my usual.... not much! Derek is online at home and he sends me a text message on my cell phone with this picture of our kids hanging out in the computer room while he is online. It is so cute, I was like... AWWW

So then yesterday I am at work and he is at home again on the computer and he sends me another text message. I am in the process of opening the message, in anticipation of seeing my children in some sort of cute pose or situation and instead, this is what I see.................
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I actually busted up laughing my head off, not because I think my husband is worthy of being laughed at, I was just so caught off guard, I was expecting a picture of our dogs, but instead I get Dereks newest haircut. He always says he's going to do this, but never does, so the day was eventually going to happen that he would completely shave his head. Give me a few days and it will grow on me... or is it that it will grow on him :)

Shake, Rattle & ......

ROLL! But we'll get back to that later. ;)

The sun has officially arrived! Not sure how long it will last, but 73 today felt awfully damn good!! I cant even believe it was that warm, I'm sitting her at 7pm in a tank top and shorts. 4 days ago, it snowed.. Gotta love WA

I was getting really excited as the weekend approached, the weatherman was promising 2 days of beautiful weather and considering we had not been riding in almost 2 weeks, we were itchin to get out. But, alas... Edgar pulled up lame and started gimping on Thursday. I kept an eye on him and he just did not improve by Friday, was even worse Sat morning and still lame this morning. I believe he has a stone bruise developing. Saturday night at our annual Horse Club Dessert Auction (of which we escaped with only $36 in damages) a few members were wanting us to get out and ride with them on Sunday and I had to turn people down, Derek kept asking me.. are you sure Edgar will not be ok to ride? then a few minutes later he'd say "dont you know anyone who has a horse you can borrow?" lol well i know lots of people with horses, but they are all riding them!! lol I felt bad and then someone mentioned he could go out w/o me on Sunday, OH HELL NO! I dont think so.. Just Kidding, okay well maybe not really. I would let him go w/o me, but I would have been pretty darn jealous.

Saturday was a pretty busy day, got some errands done, burned almost all the rest of the wood we have to burn.. one more day of burning aught to clear that mess finally up. Danielle and Collin stopped by.. then Tyler dropped over, along comes George with his dog Cash who we are housesitting for the week (he's a young boxer and Russell is not very happy, he's turned into a grumpy old man who likes his peace and quiet), George left and my parents showed up, Danielle left, then Adam & Tracy came over.. ate dinner and then we all headed to the auction, got home around 10:15 and burned some more til about midnight.

Here's cute little Collin playing in our backyard while we did some burning

Of course I woke up Sunday pretty bummed that we were not going to get to ride and as we were picking up poo in the corral at 8:15, it hit me that I DID know someone with a horse I could borrow!! I stood there in the corral with my cell phone in hand for about a minute just looking at the phone, Derek had to laugh at me, I just wasnt sure if I should really call my friend so darn early in the morning, but hey, she's a mommy to a 1yr old, so I finally hit send. She was awake, whew. She was more than happy to let me take out Bandit, a big black/white leopard appy who is about as tall as Edgar, just not as wide.

Derek had a lesson on Oakley at 9am, so we arranged to meet some friends at Mann Rd at 2pm. Derek's lesson went really well. Luanne is doing great with Oakley, I had a nice video of her working him but I think the file is too big, it will not load up on here. We dropped in on Saturday and caught her in the middle of Oakley's daily workout, so some pics of her on him are from Sat and the ones with Derek are from today. He rode for just over an hour and has some "homework" he is supposed to practice on Blackie Smalls. He was feelin a bit sore, she has him working muscles he's not used to working so when we loaded up the horses later in the afternoon and headed out to Mann Rd, he was half asleep on the drive and I'm thinking he was second guessing his decision to ride twice in one day! lol

Look at the extension on that jog! I love how Oakley moves..
Working at the Canter

Derek & Oakley - PreLesson :)

Derek is starting to learn what Oakley is learning and how to get what he wants

A nice pic of Derek trotting, working on getting some bend in Oakley

Post Lesson Question & Answer time. Derek's lookin like a real pro here, just relaxing on his horse

Here is Derek today doing some work at the trot. Derek doesnt have much experience/time at the trot, so he is learning how to sit the trot and stay natural and balanced. He did about 20-30 minutes of trotting today, he'll be a little sore tomorrow! :)

We are getting close to the ROLL of this post... I had decided not to take my camera on today's ride, pshh nothing was going to happen worthy of needing pictures! HA I wont make that mistake again.. We were heading down some great trails and as we are getting closer to the River, I am thinking to myself, I had better warn Derek when we get to the beach/sand area that I have a very strong feeling his horse is going to attempt to roll.. but as we are approaching the beach, I see a couple gals from our horse club so I stop my horse and say hello and am literally chatting for just a couple seconds when I realize that something is happening!! I look over at Derek and Smalls is ON the GROUND, starting the process of rolling, while Derek is still in the saddle.. I start to yell to get off, but of course he is smart enough to figure that one out on his own and he's just standing there (what felt like seconds was mili-seconds I'm sure, it was like slow motion) so anyways, he's standing there staring at his horse with this look of "what the hell just happened" and I start yelling "GET HIM UP, GET HIM UP" You dont want a horse to roll over on your saddle, not good.. Smalls gets up and derek is perplexed.. I give him some pointers on what to do if it should start to happen again, how to avoid it blah blah.. After a few minutes he gets back on and decides to keep his horse going in tight circles.. Now you have to realize, this is not hard sand, this is soft supple deep very nice sand! lol

So he is circling and no joke, w/o ANY warning, his horses just drops! Seriously, I was watching this time and Smalls doesnt drop and roll, no he just drops and lays there with all 4 legs tucked under him like he's just gonna tan in the sun on the beach... Derek kinda rolls off and gets Smalls back up and proceeds to let Smalls know that THAT was a very bad idea and a few minutes later, Derek gets back on and all was good. He kept him moving while he was on the sand, there were no more incidents. If I had the camera, I would have had some great pictures and possibly video. After that, Smalls was a little worked up with all the excitement and started acting up, jigging and trotting a lot, being hot and sassy basically, so we plopped him behind the horse I was riding who was walking as slow as a snail and Smalls straightened right up.

Derek had quite the weekend! I'm just happy to have a horse to borrow so we could take advantage of this great weather while it lasts. I actually got a little bit of a sunburn on the back of ny neck from being outside yesterday!

100th Post!!!

Today is my 100th post.. and amazingly there are still people that come to my site to read up. :) Hopefully I am atleast a little bit entertaining.

We survived our camping trip this past weekend. We might not have been 100% dry all the time, but it was a good weekend just the same. On our drive down, we of course had to stop by Cabela's for a visit and the guys decided to get a temporary clam diggin permit since it was supposed to be a great weekend to dig. The campground was alright and we had a pretty good setup once we got down there. Friday late afternoon we had this nice fire going, I was wondering just how long this decent weather was going to last.

We had decided to take the kids, we still were not 100% convinced it was a good idea, but we thought that if anything, they would provide heat for us while we slept. And suprisingly, they did really good. A little whining and barking (from Scout) when we left them alone in the camper and we certainly had to keep the garbage bag up high as she enjoyed tearing the bag open and spreading trash while we were out and about. :) As we sat around the fire, I left the curtains open so she could see us.... And dont tease me because my kids have clothes on.. it was cold and wet and they needed the clothes to stay warm, they were cold w/o them on!

The bummer about our camper is there is no poddy inside it, which is alright cuz I hate those camper bathrooms, you cant even move in there! But at 3 am when you have to pee.... well off to the restroom across the way is how it works. We awoke on Saturday to rain of course. Lumpy rain at that! We were on the beach by about 8:30 lookin for clams. I was the only one with rain pants on and a poncho, my big red one that makes me look like a tomatoe. And NO, there are no pics of me! :)

Derek's in the middle of a dig and the water takes his bucket away..

He pulls up his tube...

And he gets his first clam

The tide was slowly coming in, every now/then a small wave a few inches deep would drift in and we'd stop and wait for it to receed. Well after a while, this wave comes in and I realize it's a little deeper than the others, so I turn my back to the ocean and next thing I feel is this wave is approaching my butt, water is splashing all around me, the water pushed/forced its way in through the zipper on my rain pants and I was being pushed forward.. so I started to run! And run is what everyone did! lol We all got soaked.. okay well I stayed fairly dry, just a small amount of water in my jeans, whereas everyone else's legs and butt were soaked and their boots were filled with water, my feet... bone dry because I was smart enough to wear my rain pants over the top of my boots.

One of the girls who is just 6, she was pushed face first into the water, her little bucket was drifting on up the shoreline with her jacket in it, while she was trying to swim/crawl to get out of the water, our friends daughter Samantha, one of her boots went flying off her foot when the water hit, so Rachel was holding her up in the air. It was just this huge wave that was completely unexpected and came out of nowhere.. Of course the 2 little girls were crying and very upset, wet and soaked and freezing. I took this pic of our crew right after the wave. Rachel and her mother in law and the 2 girls went back to the campers while I stayed with the guys and got some shots of them out searching for clams.

Derek did get 2 clams, it was not a great day for digging. Opening day actually was the day before and I think the clams got smart and figured out how not to get caught by Saturday!

Jeff got 2 clams as well, but this is the size of clams he found.. hahaha

George ended up with a crappy (unsealed) digger, so he didnt get anything, he spent the morning looking for sand-dollars instead.

When we returned to our campers, we all napped for a couple hours and awoke to on again/off again rain and the wind was starting to kick in.. It would be semi sunny for 10 minutes but extremely windy and then for 15 minutes it would down pour, then back to just plain windy.. this continued on all night long! The wind was howling, it was kinda cool to sit in the camper and listen to it, being nice and warm with a dog in our bed. Derek slept on the top and I slept on the bottom, it worked pretty well.

Of course we awoke on Sunday to a beautiful day! It was nice packing up in the sun and not the rain. Here's just a couple other pics of our kids...

We got home around 3:30, thought really hard about saddling up the boys for a ride, but decided to do other things. Unpacked the camper, watched a little TV, burned some wood in our yard and then I looked at the horses! They were literally DIS-GUS-TING! I had opened up the fencing so the horses had the pasture and the sacrifice gravel area while we were away. The problem is the pasture area is mostly muck! Some dry spots, but those 2 boys had found all the mud to be had and they were caked in it and it was dried. It was so gross. I pulled them out and tried to brush them and decided they needed more than a brushing and since the sun was still barely out, I did what I had to do and HOSED them off! The mud just ran off. Yuck

Our bed felt pretty darn good that night! We are looking forward to our next camping adventure, the camper is stocked and ready to go. :)

Oh and we are really trying to get into working out.. Derek has a goal of weight loss since he is trying to pursue a new career in law enforcement or border patrol, so he wants to be at a certain weight by June when he starts the testing process. I am still swimming twice a week and then the other 3 days I will try to be in the gym. We re-joined the YMCA in monroe. Derek always says "Do you want to go to the Gym?" My answer is always NO, but then I say "Well I suppose I'll go" He'll say "Dont sound so enthused" and my response is "I never want to go the gym, but I'll go cuz I need to go!" I admire those that LOVE to work out. I LOVE to swim, but doing the bikes and the elypticals and treadmills... ugh