Minor Mishaps and Baby Sheep . . .

Thursdays have become pretty typical. In fact, all of my days have become pretty typical lately. I've thought about changing the name of my blog from "My Crazy, Beautiful Life" to "My Mundane, Beautiful Life". I'm not complaining, I'm just sayin'. At any rate, the little bit of excitement we had on Thursday helped to liven things up a bit. It started out on the drive out to the farm when my truck started pulling hard to the left. I pulled over and checked the tires and, sure enough, the front left tire was losing air fast. I was close enough to the farm that it made sense to drop Gloria off first before heading to Les Schawb to have my tire repaired. I'm no stranger to nails in my tires due to the fact that Rob is always building something and stray nails, screws and rivets tend to gravitate towards whatever vehicle I'm driving so I knew I didn't have much time before I'd be changing a flat rather than just having it repaired. When I finally pulled into Les Schwab I was informed that it would be about 2 1/2 hours before they could get me in. From the looks of my tire and the fact that I would have to pick Gloria back up in much less time than that, I knew that wouldn't work. I made a phone call and headed over to John's Auto Care where they were able to get me right in. They confirmed my diagnosis: I had run over a stray screw and it had embedded itself deep into my front left tire. Thirty minutes and twenty bucks later I was on my way back to the farm.


By the time I arrived, the horses had already been saddled up and were out in the arena, with the kids, ready to ride. I stepped in and helped lead the ponies around the arena. The kids are all catching on really well and Gloria is starting to look really comfortable in her saddle so, after Kim gave the go ahead for the spotters to step away, another mom and I started chatting and not paying so much attention. At the end of the lesson, the kids do a couple of exercises on the ponies before dismounting. It's kind of like putting a period at the end of a sentence. This time, however, it was more like an exclamation point! As Gloria was doing a scissor exercise where you hold yourself up off of the side of the pony and flip your leg back over to remount, her saddle slipped just enough to get Lacy's attention who snapped around to see what was going on, happened to see Button's rear end in front of her face and decided to take a nip. Buttons kicked and jumped out of the way causing Lacey to spin around, tossing Gloria to the ground. It obviously caught my attention and I ran over but Kim was right there and totally had a handle on it. My fear was that Lacey would step on Gloria while she was still on the ground but in the few seconds it took me to get to the scene, it was over and Gloria was back on her feet. Kim had her get back on Lacey and walk for a minute before dismounting again. Other than a steep rise in adrenaline, no harm was done. I didn't take a single picture in the arena but snapped this funny one of Lacey in the barn:




Meanwhile. . . twin baby sheep entered the world! One of them even arrived just before the lesson started! The kids quickly put away the horses and cleaned their bridles so they could take a good look at the new babies!! One of the babies had gotten separated from her mom and made very pitiful bawling noises as she frantically checked out the other sheep in her mama quest.


The non-mom sheep gently nudged her away which made her bawling even louder! The mama was with the other newborn who was busy snacking so she just watched and listened helplessly to her other baby who was just a few feet away but couldn't get to her.



We all watched the drama unfold (drama may be too strong of a word here) as the baby got closer and closer to the mama. . .

The mama couldn't take it any longer and finally made her way over to the helpless stray. . .

We all watched as Kim and Sarah separated the mama and babies from the rest of the herd and let them settle themselves in their own private pen. . .

So, while it wasn't too much excitement, it definitely made for an interesting afternoon. . .