Nice day outside/Saturday May 30th...

This is our beautiful quarter horse Bunny. When we got her, she was about 17 years old (we have had her about 5 years now) and the most gentle horse. She is a big girl at 16.1 hh. She was mostly used at camps for children as a trail horse. There was a time she spent in Tennessee and the prior owners said she got tick bites and that is why she has the white spots on her. 

Here is a closer look at the many spots she has.

We have been asked numerous times if she has Appaloosa in her. 

Hubby loves his big beauty Bunny. 

We both wish we could get out and ride more!!

Here is my palomino Jackie and her baby, Toby

 (who is not really a baby anymore at 3 years old)

Jackie is the alpha mare in my brood of 5 horses. Except when it comes to Toby, she never makes Toby go away when they eat.

Toby's sire was a Tobiano, so he has a beautiful washed out coloring to his spots. He has a mexican hat and the most beautiful blue eyes.

Toby has had no real training, but because of his momma Jackie

and his auntie Bunny, he has picked up the best behaviors.

Toby is a very laid back horse and loves attention.

You can't see real well, but he does have blue eyes behind those white eyelashes.

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My hubby got a new 660 quad and already he is taking it apart to fix a few minor things.

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We have one of my sons out from California this weekend to help us fix our truck.

He really did not have to do this, but he wanted to make sure we 

had our truck running to go out to see our daughter have her baby daughter.

Today it was suppose to rain. This is the sky to the south and it was very clear. 

I looked straight up and saw the moon amongst the clouds.

What a pretty sight. 

The rain did come, but it was pretty far to the north of us... thank goodness!

This is a shot to the north of our property, if it was clear, we could see the San Fransisco Peaks and the top of the mountain in Flagstaff.

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Here is my GMC waiting to get it's fly wheel changed. Wouldn't you know it, 

we get it all apart, pulled out the bad fly wheel

 to find that the auto parts store gave us the wrong one.

Hubby and my sons go out the next day to check with all the auto parts places they can. We are just too small a town (we have 2 auto parts stores) and the next towns over also did not have the part we needed. So we had to wait til Monday to order it. (we picked it up last night).

We definetly need this fixed, my daughter is due June 17th (which is also my 

hubby's birthday...*Smiles*)

My oldest son, Mattress brought back my youngest son's, TRuck's, truck.

This was kind of a long story. But I'll briefly tell ya about it.

TRuck was spending too much fixing the truck up,

getting computers to make it faster, getting a wench, lifting it, getting great big tires 

and more. But... he did not bother to make sure he had enough to pay the payments,

so he ended up missing one, then he was about to miss another one.

So, back in February, TRuck's oldest brother, Mattress said he would take the truck, get the payments caught up and then take over the payments. 

Long story short, circumstances came about that it was not what Mattress

really wanted in a truck and TRuck wanted his truck back if 

Mattress was okay with it. 

So, TRuck has his truck back with a more mature attitude about making sure he makes the payments before he does anything else.

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We were suppose to take care of the 100 or so weeds we have out in the 

pasture, these are so pretty... but boy are they sticker infested 

and are not good for the horses.

It is now June 5th and we have not been out to pick these weeds...Damn it!

Wanna Barn...

As I drive around my small town on a leisurely excursion, I am in awe of all the different barns that people have around here. I do have a dream of getting a barn of my own one of these days.

This is my dream barn:

ABILENE FOUR-STALL BARN12'x12' Stalls
Floor Space: 1,440 Sq. Ft.
Loft Area: 576 Sq. Ft.
Ridge Height - 21'

And right now this is the barn I can afford:

YEEHAW !!

Wordless Wednesday.... muuuwwwaaaaaaah... smooch

Diet Anyone???

I have to lose weight. I am getting to the age where the weight comes on but it, for some unknown reason, doesn’t go away all by itself. Over the last year and a half I had gained almost 20 pounds (since the lovely menopause happening).

It’s nice to have to buy a bigger bra…

 

but I refuse to have to buy bigger pants!!! LOL

Where I worked before I had to walk up and down 2 flights of stairs at least 5 times a day. Now where I work, there is not much walking involved. I sit at a computer for most the day unless a patient needs a representative to talk to. And I just don’t get on my horses enough, to get any exercise out of that. 

I read in a recent Family Circle magazine about these 4 ladies that are starting a diet and exercise plan… they are all going to do some sort of walking regimen. I am going to pick one and also write down a bit of a diet plan to eat healthier (I don’t eat enough calories in a day as it is to worry about that part) I WILL ADD MORE WATER TO MY DIET!!!   

Wordless Wednesday... Heavy Helmet

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Shopping with credit...

About 2 months ago, I got letters from 5 of my 

credit card debtors (I know, how come I have 5 credit cards…

 well I actually have more than that…. LOL) anyway, as I was saying I got notice that I have a choice to either accept the new interest rate of 29.99 % or I can opt out and keep my current interest rate of 5.95% to 7.80 % on these cards but if I do opt out, the company will close my accounts. So… of course I was not going to let them gouge me for the huge interest rate increase. I had 2 months to respond to this notice…. SOOOOOO 

Hubby and I decided we would go shopping and charge on a few of these cards that were at the lowest rates before we closed the accounts.

And here are the things we got… 

On March 10^th we went to Best Buy and we got a camera…  a Nikon DSLR D40 camera (Yep, the same one that Pony Girl just got.. haha!) Man.. I am loving this camera. Depending on the pixel size of the picture we can get as many as 3000 pictures stored on it. We made the pixels a little higher, so our storage on the camera is at about 2200 pictures. Yeehaw!

The OLD camera:

the NEW camera:

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Then on March 16^th we went back to Best Buy and we got ourselves a 

new laptop. This is taking a little getting used to because it has Vista operating system on it. I have not used it that much because I already have 2 desktops and hubby has a laptop that he likes and uses on a daily basis. The reason we got the new laptop is because we have had to repair hubby’s laptop once already (the power connection went bad) and it cost us about $150. Also, I am hoping to use it in bed in the evening to read up on my blogs and supposedly keep up with my checkbook. Yeehaw!

The new laptop:

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Then we went to Lowes and got faucets for our kitchen and 2 for the master bath. We used to have those funky white plastic things in the master bath. This was a good upgrade that has long been needed.

The bath faucets:

The kitchen faucet:

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Then I went onto Horse.com online and ordered me a step so I can get on my horses without having to have hubby or someone else there to help lift me up.

I got an Easy-up that can be hooked to the stirrup so that if I am out and about on my horse, I can get on by myself. (I am 5’1” AND old and need all the help I can get to get on my big horses… LOL) 

I also got dewormer and flymasks for each of the horses. I got some door latches for the hay barn and a few gate latches (ones that my mischievous gelding can’t get open I hope). And a few other things that were needed.

There is even little sparkles on this fly mask for my beauties.

 

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Then we went to the Nascar race down in Phoenix.

YEEHAW!

Go Gordon

Go Earnhart 

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That was a nice spending spree….the bad thing is now we have to pay the bills (but at least they are at a low interest rate!!!!)

What does one do?

I will try and make this a short story before I ask the title question again.

My hubby and I lived a few miles from the beach in southern California for almost our whole lives. We raised our 6 kids there. We met a great friend (I will refer to him as G) there who has always been there for us and so loyal. We lived in the same housing tract for almost 25 years. When we came out to AZ to sign the papers on the land we purchased, G came with us and made a purchase of land up the dirt road from us. We made our move here to Arizona and a few years later G followed us.   G is single and needless to say he met a few ladies in the last 4 years he has lived here. The last lady he met through a friend up the dirt road from him. She was involved, but wanted out of her relationship and evicted from her home. OK... long story so far... cut to the chase... This lady has a daughter that has horses. The lady was able to sell 3 of the horses, but the daughter wanted to keep the last 2. The day came when this lady finally made the (temporary it was suppose to be) move to his home. I and hubby decided we would help him out and keep the horses here for a while until she was on her own again.

Well.... 2 years later, we still have the horses. What bugs me the most, the daughter at first came by about once a month to pick out their feet and brush them and ride them. Then that time frame got more and more spaced out. I know G wishes things were different. I feel he does not want this lady living with him, but he does so like the companionship. 

So... my dilemna. Way too often, they don't have enough feed and I am pulling from ours to feed their horses. The last time the daughter came down to see her horses she rode each one for about 15 minutes. Considering she rides them hard and fast during this visit and the interim time from her prior visit to this time has been almost 4 months, I don't think this is too good for the horses sake. Then there is the time I call them to let them know that the farrier will be down if they want to have them trimmed. They say no. Then 4 months later I call again about the farrier, they say no. Then finally when I had the farrier out last month, they finally said yes. Needless to say the farrier did not look at these horses before telling G how much he charges and G wrote the check and left. So when the farrier got to these horses, the farrier saw how grown out they were and I know he got underpaid, so I put in an additional 10 bucks. 

Now when we took these horses in, they also came with about 10 horse panels.  One day about 3 months ago I got a call from the daughter and she asked if she could have 5 of the panels back so she could work with another horse for a friend. I was floored and a bit mad. I said the first thing that came to mind by telling her that I think that by us keeping her horses and caring for them these past 2 years for nothing that the panels are ours now. Of course, I felt bad by saying this after I hung up. My hubby called G a few days later and said the panels are theirs and they can come and get them anytime they want.  My hubby and I have often felt that maybe it is about time to ask them to move the horses to G's land (they have 2 acres). Then we always think that if we did that they may not want to come and help us when we go somewhere and we need someone to feed our animals.

They never came and got the panels. But I think there is a bit of a rif between G and us. 

I had to call the lady today to tell her that her horses don't have any feed again because when she got the last bale we had already fed her horses for 5 feedings of our feed (which really pissed me off because it made it so my horses missed a feeding and only got their grain and carrots for their Sunday night meal).    

So... to the question... What does one do in this situation?                                           

Time flying by...

Man oh man.. it has been wayyyyy tooo long! It seems like the last few months have just flown by.

Updates on the home front are:

#1 is……I HAVE TO GO READING my favorite blogs!

 

#2 is…..We no longer have the little foster kids. There were so many issues that made us make a decision to have the kids moved to another home. First of all, these poor boys had to be transported 3 times a week to see their father for a 2 hour visit and the drive usually took about an hour and half one way, so these kids had to be in a car for 3 hours 3 days a week. Then they had the kids in therapy to learn how to handle seeing their father and how to behave in the car after “daddy visits”. The thing about therapy was that they did not do therapy right after a time with daddy so they could address the daddy issues they had… nooo, therapy became what they were doing at daycare and analyzing US as foster parents. We would get a call from our CPS worker that said they were concerned about the kids’ play time or that their nails had a little dirt under them or that the boys had said they did not have a bath the night before. Did the therapist ever call us with her concerns NOOO.  Also, mommy was going to be released from jail and the kids were then also going to have to visit her (so another trip into the 4th town south from us). We just could no longer have these kids have to be the ones to have to travel for these visits. And I just could stand the idea that they would be going back to homes with drug addicted parents, then back to foster care again. So we achieved that milestone in our lives.

 

#3 is…. The horses and my house were being neglected with having kids in the house, so I have been trying to do catch up on things that would get put on the back burner. It is nice that the weather is better, makes for being out with the horses so much more pleasant.

 

#4 is… I will have to write some stuff about our cruise and our recent visit to our kids in California.

 

But for now… I am going to do a little #1.

 

Take care and I will be back soon.

Snow pics

So here they are... pics of our snow... YeeHaw!

This one was taken last night from my front porch looking out toward the horses... They even have snow on their backs.

This is one of the little guys bikes, I took this one this morning...

This is my quad, this was taken this morning. This is between the house and the garage.

This was taken today at about noon. This is across the street from my work. These people have 2 little horses that are about 6 months old.

We are expecting a big storm this weekend that is suppose to bring more snow than this storm did. But we will be driving out to California to go on our cruise.... Another YEEHAW!!

Snow Day...

Finally we are getting snow!!

I guess it is good then that I have to be stuck inside preparing all my stuff for my taxes anyway. One of my son’s girlfriends will be doing them for me this year, so I will save almost $250 right there not having to pay someone. For the 2 years prior to this tax year I had 2 businesses. I was a real estate agent (not by my own choice… another story one day to tell you) and we have the horse business. This tax year we will only have the horse business. So the taxes should be a little easier… then next year I may be able to do them all by my little own self.

So.. back to the snow… it is so beautiful. I know there are parts of the country where people are even snowed in, but I still think it is all so pretty. We won’t be snowed in… no such luck here. We have almost 2 inches accumulated and it is the early part of the storm. I will take pictures in the morning and post them for you.

Back to my taxes for a bit… then its bed time… or, maybe I will go to bed now!

LOL