Our horse club Christmas party was this past weekend, I was in charge of organizing it. I made bird seed balls to give to each attendee, they turned out really cute and most members seemed to like them. :) The party was at Rhodes River Ranch.. a real nice horse facility in N Arlington, the restaurant overlooks the arena and stalls. It is a cool environment, quite fancy for being in a barn and the food was delicious. This year was a big turnout, with 43 members/guests! We always have some year-end awards and this year I received 2 of them. Our club has a "ride-hours" challenge, we keep track of every hour we have our butts in the saddle from Nov 1 - Oct 31 and the guy/girl with the most hours wins. There are certain criteria you must meet to qualify for the award, you have to be a member of course, you must attend a club work party and you have to volunteer in some capacity of the club atleast once during the year.Well my ride-hours were pretty sad for 2011!! I turned in only 58.5 hours (last year I was more than double that). The guy with the most hours had 225 and then the girl with the most had 182, however the gal did not qualify since she did not do a work party this year, and since not many in our club take advantage of trying to win this award, I won by default!! Do you know how embarrassing it is to be a very active member of a horse club and win with so little time in the saddle.. ;) Next year will be better.
I also (by suprise) won a year-end silly award. I was recognized for all the work I do in the club, as I am the Treasurer, Secretary and run our website, as well as volunteer to help with our 2 major fundraisers, trailbossing and working to come up with new and fresh ideas for attracting new members etc. Well earlier this year for our Prize Ride, there was a lot of drama around the issue of who was going to get the gate key to open the tree farm for our event and it was decided that I would have the key. Well I received the key alright, but as we loaded up the horses and headed to Arlington to set up for the ride, damn if I didnt forget that key at home! So more finagelling had to be done to get someone else in the area to come open the gate and then have another friend stop by our house to bring us the key... I received the "Key Player" award! I was embarrassed of course, but it was pretty funny!
I got a few pics of the dogs "posed" in front of our stockings and the tree.. Cooper always looks so serious in pictures, his normal goofey self becomes a statue! lol Ellie is the only one with some character in her expression and Russell, heck he's just thinking "will you hurry up, this is long enough being forced to sit this close to Cooper, give me my blankey to crawl under and leave me the hell alone, bah humbug!"
So Derek & I have been together 20+ years now, amazing in all that time (which includes now too) that we have not been pregnant nor heard the tick tock of the baby clock. We've talked about adoption off/on for the past 10 years, always saying that if we felt the urge to have a child, we would most likely go that route as I dont have a real great desire to be pregnant, neither of us feels like its important to spread our own seed and we both know there are lots of children that need parents. We've discussed that we know we would be good parents and over the years have talked about the ways inwhich we would raise a child, but it has always been a matter of timing for me.I have always felt that the best way to do things is: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a home and then comes the baby carriage! ;) I do not look down on people for not doing it in this order, but I could not consciously consider raising a child when I was living paycheck to paycheck and when I was not ready and willing to put my hobbies and interests behind those of a child. Derek & I both feel your life becomes all about your child and that you come 2nd, so we just needed to wait til we felt it was right to take that next step (for a long time we were not sure if it would ever feel right). Well the tick tock clock has been ticking lately and although that clock has not quite convinced me to get pregnant, we finally are feeling that we are missing out now by not having a child to raise! :)
Here's the ideal.. We would find a friend of a friend of an acquantance type thing that has a child they for whatever reason have decided not to raise, and would like to adopt it to us! We'd prefer a child 1-4 years old, young enough to still establish an early bond but not necessarily an infant. I would take an infant if the situation worked out that way, but it is not necessary. We are going to start looking into the process after the first of the year. We are not at all sure how it will end up, but we dont want to regret not moving forward. It would be close to free if we decided to adopt an older child (6+ years old) as the state pretty much funds that process, but since we want a young child, it will cost us upwards of $10,000+! That is the part that sucks, but it is the cost of what we want.
In all seriousness, we just want the word out there to our friends and family because you just never know who knows someone who might be considering adoption for their child but doesnt want to go through the state program etc. So the secrets out, the cat's outta the bag...
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