Forgot

I forgot to mention in my below post that our good friends George & Rachel had their baby Saturday morning around 3am, little miss Emily Ray Millington! Here she is with her big sister Samantha and then proud pappy George. I cant wait to see her in person.. :)

Also, this past weekend (Fri night actually) I found a craigslist "deal" and bought over 70 yards of fabric (worth atleast $600) but I got it all for $125. There are about 30 different patterns, wide variety. It is great stuff to use down the road for projects and quilts and whatever else I may come up with to make. I have decided too that I want to make a denim and flannel quilt for our spare bed, that will be quite the project but I'm looking forward to doing it down the road. So if you or you know anyone that is throwing out old denim jeans, I'll take them!

Mowing in February??

Since when have you had to mow your lawn in February in the state of WA??? :) Well that's one of the things I did this weekend.. the grass is really starting to sprout with all this 55+ weather we've been having for over a week now. It was a last minute decision, but it sure looks nice, I just cannot get over that it is only February...

This past weekend was dedicated to fixing the floor in the horse trailer. We had been planning this for a few weeks, as it was the first free weekend Derek has had in a long time! We could feel that the back end of some of the trailer boards were getting very weak and with hauling 2 BIG horses, we feared a leg would go through, so we got to work, invited my dad over to supervise and got this project conquered! :)

You can see in the above pic how the boards look rotted. We initially thought it was just a few boards but after pulling the mats up, we realized the entire back edge there was very weak and the whole floor would need replacing, not just a couple boards.

Since the front section of the floor was in great shape still, we (well I should stop saying we because Derek and my dad made the executive decisions! lol) anyways, it was decided that we (oh the hell with it, it's just easier to say we) we cut about 2/3 of the floor out, leaving the top section alone.

Then the guys started pulling up all the screws to get the rotted boards out. The good thing is that most of the boards are still 100% okay, so if we cut about a foot off the rotted end, we'll have some decent 7 foot boards to use for other projects.

After the boards were out, the guys took the trailer to Marysville and welded in a new support brace up at the front so that there would be sometime to screw the new boards into. By the time the guys got back from buying the wood and welding in a new brace, we had just enough time to cut the floor boards and get them in the trailer. Derek and I finished up screwing in the boards on Sunday afternoon, the new floor looks so nice! Yeah, too bad I got preoccupied mowing the yard and riding my horse (I mean Derek's horse!) that I didnt get a chance to take pics of the fnished project, but I'm sure you can imagine what 10 2x8's layed out on a trailer floor look like! lol

The project really only cost $85 for the wood and then $25 for the screws.. Not too bad and I feel SOOO much relief now that I know it will support the horses completely again. After the trailer was done, I mowed the lawn and Derek started working on cleaning up the boat from his camping trip last month. It was still full of muck. I had just enough daylight to squeeze in a 45 minute ride on Edgar, I got back in the driveway at 5:30, with maybe only 10-15 minutes to spare on it not being too dusk to be out riding down the road.

We also bought last week a pressure washer, a much needed tool for our property, so Saturday I was able to wash the trailer mats and also the front walkway which had a slight green hue to it! :) The next nice weekend we get, we need to clean the deck and wash it as there is more of that green growing on it as well. It was a very productive weekend and i'm looking forward to hopefully more nice weather down the road because it feels great to get shit done around the place! lol

Thursday we get shoes put on Big Red and either Sat or Sun we'll take him out for a trailride.. looking forward to it! And I know Derek is excited to get back on Edgar, they are just a great fit for eachother and I'm so happy that things are working out..

Here are a couple pics

Here are a couple pics.. Finally


JoJo when I babysat him a few months ago, he enjoyed petting Scout




Miss Scout snuggled up to Russell as she usually did to keep warm



Here's the blankie I made for George & Rachel's baby that is due in a few weeks! My very first blanket ever, I think I did a great job and it was soooo soft. I wanted to keep it but it was obviously a baby blanket so it would have been weird to have it laying around the house, people might ask questions! lol

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)

Something to look forward to...

Derek and I have decided that maybe for our 20yr anniversary, we will renew our vows.. and it is right around the corner... Damn are we getting old or what!! :) This year will be 14 years, so only 6 more to go AND we thought maybe we would do it in Hawaii on the beach or something... We've never been and although it would be nice to go between now/then, if we dont get a chance then our first trip to the tropical land will be for a much needed vacation and to revow the next 20 years. I think it would be cool to renew every 20 years.. so that's my plan!

No.. we do not have a 2nd dog yet! hehe We did settle on a Boykin Spaniel, well not settling as in a bad thing, we just came to the decision that this breed is the breed for us. We've (okay I've) been talking with some breeders online, trainers etc.. trying to figure out who we want to buy a dog from etc. I did find a couple WA breeders, one will have pups ready mid July.. another guy in OR will have pups this summer as well, he already has 8 people on the pre-paid waiting list! We are excited and I think Russell will be happy too.

He's been pretty funny, we now take him almost everywhere.. He went to the board mtg with us, but he did stay in the truck since it was at a restaurant. He enjoys hangin in the truck, we bought him a bed thing that sits between us in the front of the cab, he's happy as a clam.

Derek's job has been stable so far, which is great news! He's almost done with that panel truck project we've had in the shop for many months.. okay not almost done but almost done with phase 1.. lol But when this phase is done, Harry will take the truck home, get it put back together and drive it a while with primer on it, eventually it will find it's way back into the shop for its real paintjob.

The both of us are so ready to start riding again! Its been basically 3 months since we rode last, this weekend I am going to ride Big Red. The owner, Gerri, she calls him Red or Red Horse.. I like calling him Big Red, even though he's not red in color at all, I'll have to ask her how he got his name. But he's big and I'm super excited about getting him home eventually.

Oh and I finished that blanket I was working on, I didnt post much info about it on here since I was not sure if the friend I made it for would be reading up, but it turned out so good! Not to brag at all, but I just wanted to keep it.. it was so soft and pretty.. lol I did take pics and when I get home will try to remember to login and repost with pics.. I was proud of myself for doing a pretty darn good job on it, but I do think I am retaining a slight kink in my neck from handsewing for 4 hours on the edging piece that had to be hand sewn! I wake up a tiny bit stiff in the neck and I now realize it is a sewing hangover. lol

Oh and I had this crazy dream the other night, Derek was drilling screws into my eyelids, stomach and toes! He was pushing really hard on the drill, apparently I have tough bones.. I wasnt upset or scared and he wasnt angry, but I did walk funny with screws in my toes... lol I cant remember why he was doing it in my dream, my coworker says I must feel like I'm getting screwed over in my life somehow but I dont think I feel that way about anyone.. it was just weird and I had to post cuz I found it funny as well, very random!

Oh and one last thing before I sign off for another week.. Oh wait I have to sign back in later to post some pics! :) This movie has been out in the theatres for quite a while actually and I really had NO interest in seeing it.. Avatar! The previews didnt seem very appealing, something about sci-fi and weird creatures and battle scenes.. But then I just kept hearing over and over again that it was amazing and that seeing it in 3D was the ONLY way to see the movie. Well I decided that I better go check it out and take advantage of seeing it in 3D on the big screen and was I not one tiny bit sorry I did! Derek and I came out of this almost 3 hour movie just feeling in awww.. there were parts of that movie that were so magical and fairytale-like, but not dumb fairytale. Even Derek wanted to be in Avatar land.. it was mystical and magnificent and beautiful at times with a great story. The colors were amazing, I was just blown away with how much I truly loved that movie and many times had wished I could transport myself there. It made me feel like I was in heaven at times and I imagined that that is what heaven would be like when I get to go and see Carrie. Sounds dumb maybe to others, but the magic tree and the water they swam in and how the tree branches lit up as they ran across them.. that is what I want my heaven to look like.