Today was the real test for me to see if I've truly overcome my fear of horses. It's one thing to be able to saddle a pony, another to ride an average sized horse, but it's another thing altogether to meet and even ride a huge draft horse!
This is Lisa and Max. Max is the tallest horse in the state and just a few inches shy of the tallest horse EVER:
Lisa invited us to help her with the horses and we were a little surprised at their size even though she had forewarned us that they were big! I'd say big is an understatement!
The girls helped groom and feed the horses and then they took turns riding them. This is Megan on Rocky:
Gloria on Rocky:
Before putting Rocky away, Lisa asked the girls if they could give him a little haircut. She said his mo hawk looked funny and she needed someone to give him a trim. Of course the girls were happy to oblige. . .
The girls were pretty happy about EVERYTHING. . .
After we put Rocky back in his stall, Max got to take a turn with the girls. . .
He is younger and bigger. And, Lisa warned us, a little unpredictable. . .
Gloria and Megan insisted I take a turn and that's about the time I decided it was time to see if I had officially conquered my fear. Nope, I hadn't. But it was fun while it lasted.
Lisa asked the girls if they would like to ride Max bare back on the way back to his stall and, while they were a little uncertain at first, they courageously did it anyway!
Before we left, Lisa introduced us to Buster the donkey. It was a fun ending to a fun afternoon!
We really did have an amazing time with these horses once we got over our initial surprise at their size! Lisa said we could come back anytime and Gloria has already asked me several times this evening when we can go back. I'm pretty sure it will be sooner rather than later.
Because I have no self-control at all, I put some of the 90 pictures that I took in a slide show. It's not quite the same as being there in person but it's pretty close. . .
When it is 105 degrees in July, I want to remember this day. After spending two hours outside in below freezing temperatures, I felt like my toes would just break right off if I stubbed them on something!
Wish I could bottle this cold and pop it open this summer. . .
It's a new year with the all new possibility of qualifying for that Mother-of-the-Year award that I win and lose on a regular basis! And that's the reason I took the girls to the mall today.
This one-picture-a-day thing is going to be harder than I thought! Yesterday I couldn't find a picture to save my life, which led to the ear-stitching photo, and today I took about 150 pics and managed to limit myself to my three favorites! (The rest will be on Flickr!!)
I like this one for obvious reasons:
And I chose this one because it's a good shot of our projector which made watching the Fiesta Bowl at The Egyptian tonight possible!! I wasn't sure I would enjoy being crammed in the theatre with 500-700 strangers, most of whom would be drinking beer and cheering wildly for The Broncos, but we had a really great time.
And, finally, I just had to post this one: I wasn't sure what kind of crowd we would encounter at the theatre so I left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa. They had a great time and finished up this puzzle just before it was time to go home.
Even though this picture is kind of gross, in the spirit of my new resolution to post one picture everyday, Emma's stitches are all I could come up with . . . Besides, this was a pretty big deal during the last couple of weeks and I haven't said much about it. Emma has had chronic ear infections pretty much her whole life. The vet has told us that some dogs are just more prone to them than others and it is difficult to pin point exactly what the cause is. We were treating her current infection during the week before Christmas the way we always do when it flares up, only this time it was painful enough to her that she would often shake her head violently to deal with it. This led to an infectious bubble on the inside of her ear flap called a hemotoma. If left untreated it can cause permanent hearing loss as well as many other health problems. Regardless of all that, she was in obvious pain so we took her in for treatment on the day before Christmas Eve. The vet said she would need emergency surgery in order to give her some relief so, of course, we agreed. This was still a tough pill to swallow (no pun intended!) considering we recently spent close to $1500 on her last surgery just a few months ago!
To make a long story short, she had surgery on the 23rd and came home with a cone on the 24th needing constant supervision. Emma is a very nervous dog to begin with and the cone managed to freak her out even more! None of us were getting any rest. Thankfully they make anti-anxiety medication for dogs and once we started giving that to her on a regular basis we all started to sleep at night.
A few days ago we were able to get rid of the cone, much to Emma's relief, followed a day later by the bandages and now we just have to put drops in her ear twice daily to clear up any residual infection so this won't happen again. I NEVER want this to happen again!
Sometime this week the stitches holding the two slices of her ear together will come out and we'll hope for the best. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be at least a year before we have to reach so deeply in our pockets again for another vet bill!!
Garcia's Mexican Restaurant, Park Center Blvd., 1989. Although this picture of Barbacoa Restaurant was taken on January 2nd, 2010, it transported me back to the day in 1989 that I walked through the front doors of what was then Garcia's Mexican Restaurant and turned in my application for a food service position. At that time it was my dream job. I had been working at Sizzler for about 3 years and I was tired of knocking myself out every day for very little tip money. I was a good food server and I thought I was ready to work at a REAL restaurant. I was newly engaged, had a nice apartment with my sister and felt like it was time to make a change. Rob and I ate at Garcia's on a pretty regular basis when we were dating, even if it was just to sit on the patio and eat chips and salsa. In my mind, it was a stretch to even think I could get a job there but I really wanted it to happen so I turned in my application.
They gave me good news and bad news: They didn't need any food servers at that point but if I would be willing to start as a cocktail waitress, I could take the first food server position that came available. I didn't know anything about serving alcohol but I decided to take the job anyway. I didn't mind serving drinks, mostly margaritas and Mexican beer, and it was a pretty cushy job compared to what I was used to. I eventually moved on to food service (as well as a bit of bar tending!) and made many good friends along the way. In many ways, I considered my fellow employees to be my extended family. I worked there right up until Zach's second birthday in 1994 when I decided to stay home and have a little daycare in my new house. Shortly after that, the restaurant changed hands and names and I grieved a little bit over losing such an important part of my life.
Today I heard the news that the building had been the victim of a three-alarm fire overnight and was a total loss. It's strange how something can be so far removed and yet feel so personal. I had to drive by this afternoon and see the damage for myself. It brought out some pretty strange emotions in me from regret to sadness to curiosity about what has happened over the years to the people I forged such close relationships with during that time and yet still lost track of. It's been on my mind all day and, for some reason, I'm craving chips and salsa. . .
Using elements from both games, Zach has designed a very strategic way to combine two of our favorite past times into one really confusing, difficult and time-consuming activity.
Here is how it's played, in a nut-shell:
The Risk armies are placed first, then the Catan settlements and roads are placed followed by the collecting of the Catan resources and, finally, the Risk territories (on the Catan layout) are counted up so the armies can be reinforced.
And then the game begins.
Each player's turn consists of:
1. Rolling the red and yellow Catan dice and collecting resources
2. Counting territories and regions and collecting the corresponding army pieces to place on the board
3. Combat with the red and black Risk dice (a settlement adds 1 number to the highest die for the defender while a city adds 2 numbers)
4. Collecting territory and adventure cards if the battle was successful (if a territory is successfully conquered, a resource is gathered corresponding to the conquered territory)
5. Building settlements, cities and roads if able
6. Fortifying your position
It took 3 hours for Zach to set it up, five hours for him to completely annihilate me and 30 minutes to put it away.
I found the change I was looking for!! At least for now.
Melanie casually mentioned last night that she would be using the 365 projectfor her blog this year which triggered my memory all the way back to December of 2006when I started this blog with the intention of posting 1 (or 2) pictures everyday that reflected my life and what is important to me.
Obviously I didn't have the discipline to do that. I took and posted anywhere from 1 to 100 pictures just about everyday!! Totally out of control. So, I guess you could say I'm getting back to my roots.
ONE picture. Everyday.
It's going to be about QUALITY not QUANTITY.
But, of course, I'll have the rest of my pictures on Flickr just for good measure. I'm not really a cold turkey kind of a gal. . .
Thursday of this week marks a full three years of semi-regular blogging. I'm thinking maybe it's time for a change as we slip into 2010. Maybe there will be less horses and less events. Maybe I'll tell more stories about my life. Maybe not. I've enjoyed posting everyday things about my life but it's felt kind of mundane lately. Maybe I'll just stop for a season. Or maybe it will just continue to be me talking about the same stuff. Same song, fourth verse. Things in my life seem to be changing. Maybe it's time my blog reflected that a little more. Then again, maybe not. I guess only time will tell. . .
I usually look forward to Christmas morning more than any other day of the year. I have a Christmas Eve/Christmas Morning routine that I have followed for years. USUALLY, this is what it looks like: After celebrating with my family in Nampa, the kids settle down in the living room on the couch so they can wake up and see the gifts under the tree. I putter around, cleaning things up and wrapping stocking stuffers until the kids fall asleep. As soon as I hear soft snoring sounds coming from the couch I start setting out their gifts and filling up their stockings. We've never done the Santa thing so I don't really worry about getting caught but the kids like to be surprised so even if they are faking it, they don't let me know it! While I'm setting out the gifts, I play my favorite Christmas CD's softly on the stereo and light all the candles in the house. The lights on the tree are glowing as well as the lights that are strung around the inside living room windows. It's really the only night of the year that I'm the last one asleep. I'm also the first one up on Christmas morning. The first thing I do is make coffee and preheat the oven for the cinnamon rolls. I turn the Christmas music back on and wait for the kids to wake up. If they aren't awake by the time I'm ready to start the day, I put on my favorite Christmas song of all time, Rich Mullins' You Gotta Get Up:
By the time everyone is awake and the kids are opening their socks, the coffee and the cinnamon rolls are ready and we have a nice, relaxing morning opening gifts. . .
That's how we USUALLY experience Christmas morning. This year was the exception. Due to Emma's surgery and subsequent pain and anguish, Christmas Eve right through to Christmas morning was a blur of trying to calm Emma down while listening to Gloria cough all night. I managed to fill the stockings and put the gifts under the tree in between Emma's episodes but there was little sleep to be had. The worst came at about 4 in the morning when Emma needed to go out to do her business but instead ran around like someone possessed while Rob and I chased her in the cold, frozen, dark back yard trying to keep her from ripping her stitches open. Needless to say by the time the kids were up and ready to open gifts, I hadn't made any coffee and Rich Mullins' voice was absent from Christmas morning for the first time in about 10 years.
For the sake of the kids, I put on a happy face and eventually turned on the music, made the cinnamon rolls and lit the candles but I wasn't feeling a whole lot of Christmas joy!!
I did eventually get into the spirit of things as the kids began opening the things I had carefully and thoughtfully picked out for them. It wasn't easy finding this classic Star Wars Monopoly game for Zach!!
Despite coughing all night, Gloria still happily opened the things she had put on her wish list. . .
I was pretty spoiled, too. Sharpies always make me feel better!!
We took our time opening gifts and by the time my parents arrived to wish us a Merry Christmas, I was in a much better mood. . .
This is the Holiday Barbie set from 1998, the year Gloria was born. Gotta love E-bay. . .
Gloria finally opened her main gift: a sparkly, pink, electric guitar. . .
Too bad Rob wouldn't let her play it until he tuned it. . .
Zach takes the longest to open his gifts because he takes time to enjoy each and every one of them as he unwraps them. He's always been that way. When he was little it would literally take him all day long to open all of his gifts. . .
He was pretty happy with his Luke and Lea action figures. By the way, it isn't the prisoner Lea, she was too expensive. . .
After about a 45 minute tuning, Gloria finally got her hands on her guitar. . .
Zach still had presents to open when my parents got there, so they were able to get in on a little bit of the gift opening. . .
Just what every 17 year old boy needs . . .
We packed up a few of our things and the rest of the gifts and headed over to the in-laws around noon. Unfortunately, Emma had to go with us. We were still able to enjoy a few more hours of gift opening while we took turns checking on her. . .
We really take our time with family gifts which is nice. Everyone sits in a circle in the living room and we open them one by one. It's not that we have a ton of stuff, it just takes awhile as we enjoy watching each person open their presents. . .
We took a little time to play with our gifts. . .
Gloria played a little Christmas-y Smoke On The Water. . .
Dinner, as usual, was delicious. . .
Topped off by lots and lots of goodies. . .
We called it a day in the late afternoon but took a family picture before everyone went on their way. . .
So, it wasn't our usual, traditional Christmas but we spent the day with family and by the end of the day, we were tired but happy. Plus, we gave Emma a Valium that Jeanie had leftover from her dog's last procedure so that made everything better. It's amazing what a good night's sleep will do for you!
