Time for another post..

I'm told I am not on here enough! :) Sorry to my followers.. I always feel bad just blah blahing about the boring parts of our lives right now. Not that life is overly boring, just nothing exciting going on.. No softball injuries to post, I havent come off any horses lately (knock knock on wood).. no critters dying (Thank Goodness!!)

So life is in a lull for now. I did think about posting those pics.. that's as far as it got as you can tell. I will do my best (I know blah blah same story I always say) to remember to do that tonight. I really need to get in the hang of bringing my camera with me to places and start taking pics of the things happening..

for instance, Big Red! I mean, duh! I was just out there a week ago, it was a beautiful Saturday day with the sun shining and I forget to bring the camera to introduce you all to him. I rode him briefly last Friday night in the arena, then Saturday we hauled Edgar up to the arena so Derek could ride while I rode Red. We rode in the arena a while then out in a big field. Got 1.5 hours in, but a lot of that was just sitting on the horses and chatting. Red hasnt been worked much in 2 years, so he was a bit spooky. He was nice to ride, I wasnt 100% relaxed on him since he was acting a little skittish. He is as round as a barrel, so my saddle doesnt sit firmly on him, it wobbles a bit which made me a little uneasy as well. I think my saddle fits him well, he's just so darn round! :) I might have to invest in a nice pad to help stabilize my saddle.

So we filed our taxes on Jan 31st, which was a Sunday. I did them myself online, it was much easier than I thought it would be and it only cost me $30! Well we had our refund in our bank just 5 days later on Friday! Amazing... Most of the refund will be used to pay for our property taxes, bummer. But atleast we got a refund large enough to cover them darn taxes.

Now that the panel truck will be done this weekend, we plan to focus on riding. The following weekend we have to fix the floor in the horse trailer, there are some weak boards that need replacing before we can haul 2 huge horses in it! Once that is done, the weekend after that we will take Edgar and Big Red out on a trail ride. The trail ride will really tell me how much I like Red and then most likely after that ride I will bring him home. He's a nice horse and will most likely work out great for what we are wanting right now. I'm sure in time I will really grow to love the horse, the more I can ride him and get to bond with him. He's big though, I never imagined I would look down on Edgar!

Oh and quickly on the dog issue, the breeder in OR, we are not going with them because they breed for smaller Boykins. The breeder in WA we were 90% sure we wanted to go with and would have pups in July ready to take home, well we opted not to go with her either. She is a very nice person, but her dog is not hip certified and the male (owned by Jim) she was going to breed to scored low on the hip test for us to be comfortable with. Now Jim, I've been talking to him a lot, he is in Eatonville and owns the male I was just talking about, however he has a female with a good hip score and he was thinking on breeding her to Earl (dog) down in OR that is very well trained, a great gun dog.

I dont know if this link will work, but here goes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLZRv3hfuc

If you click on that link or copy/paste it, you have to fast forward to 2:30 and you will see a little brown dog do a retrieve.. very cute dog! That is Earl! So if Jim breeds his female to Earl, he wants us to have pick of the litter.. EXCITING. The only bummer is that he is not breeding until the fall, so we are looking at getting a Thanksgiving pup. Which we cannot be too dissappointed, with these breeds, you sometimes have to wait a while for the right dog. So for now, we are waiting to hear from Jim, he wants to talk with Earl's owner and confirm plans etc.. But for now we are keeping the fingers crossed because we feel this could be a great dog. If you want to see cute Boykins, try some of these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-fqMeNR8sk (this one is hilarious!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7zAA7DfPi0&feature=related (this is is short but very cute)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDjSBpREPnQ&feature=related (dirty dog!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGgShEjwwZQ&NR=1 (one last cute one of 8 weeks pups)