A Very Horsie Christmas

I hope that everyone had a very enjoyable Christmas. I wasn't sure how I felt about mine going into it but it turned out to be a very good holiday.

Last year, my daughter was ill and ended up in the hospital for 2 weeks with acute kidney failure. It was quite scary. This year my son is on deployment to the middle east. But we've been able to connect with him pretty often so that has been good. He called early Christmas morning and we all had a lovely chat.

Ripley crawled up on the couch to listen to her owner

We had a lot of rain and then a sudden drop in temperatures which meant that the ring was hard with icy patches. When I can't ride I turned to baking.

cinnamon buns

homemade ice cream sandwich with a scoop of french vanilla,  whipped cream,
hot fudge & strawberry sauce and grated chocolate sprinkled on top

While baking is fun it's probably not the best coping mechanism......

Ed and I had bought a new mattress so we had agreed on 'no gifts'. 

And of course we immediately violated that. 

He surprised me with a new arial shot of our farm. 

looking at the barn. See the horses watching these guys with the drone?

most of our property from the top. 

this is the one he framed

I love seeing these photos. They show all the work we've done over the years. 

My daughter bought me a lovely riding shirt and then completely blew me away by giving me this set:

I mean, can you even?

It's going to look lovely on Miss Carmen. I think we can safely assume that the person who used to heap scorn on people who dressed their horses in bright colours on their horse is now dead. 

The young woman that Irish is teaching to ride really surprised me with these beautiful signs: 

ignore the barn aisle that needs sweeping,
 there's no point until the stall doors are closed. 

We had a lovely dinner with just the three of us. Later I went out to the barn to do the night feed/clean. I was trying to decide if I should take Carmen out and give her a groom. I normally leave the stall doors open and Carmen usually hangs out at the door but doesn't leave. That night I heard her hooves on the barn aisle. 

Get back I said. Normally she would just back up and sigh. This time she actually walked out. I expected her to head to the hay pile across the aisle but she turned and walked down the barn. I wasn't too worried that she was going to leave so I slowly walked out of the stall saying what are you doing missy?

You may think I'm making up what happened next but I swear I am not. Carmen walked to where I groom her, turned around and stood in exactly that spot looking at me expectantly. She was asking me to groom her! I took off her blanket and gave her good deep groom which she appeared to savour. I then cleaned her stall, restocked her hay and water while she watched me. I put on her blanket and said there you go and she went back to her stall. 

This horse guys, she continually surprises me.