Simply Me

A horse photographer...I'm not!

These turkeys are harder to work with than kids and as bad as dogs :P

I was determined though to try and get some new pictures of Izzy and Cha Cha. Cha Cha will at least stand away from the person holding her lead rope. Izzy likes to be right next to you, so that's why Tom gets to be in the pictures with her.

And something got switched when I started shooting Izzy because all her photos came out totally under exposed. Thank goodness for RAW format. I'll need to try again but at least I have something to show for my efforts.

Happy 4th?

Today's focus here at this house has been anything but the celebration of our country's independence.

I got up early as the dogs and the horses don't understand the concept of sleeping in. After taking care of some morning chores, I decided to do some work on my computer. I've been unable to access the external hard drive on the desktop over the wireless network I have setup. I thought a reboot of the desktop would do the trick.

The darn thing wouldn't boot back up. ::::banging head on wall:::::

At first I thought it was the monitor but ultimately realized it was the computer itself. I've been meaning to do a refresh of the whole system but hadn't done so yet. At this point I had no option but put in the emergency reboot disk which wipes away anything on the hard drive (C: drive not the EHD). I then spent all morning re-installing various things.  All seemed well.

Until about 30 minutes ago when the darn thing shut down by itself and won't reboot. I guess we'll need to have someone look at it.

I don't think I mentioned that I already lost another external hard drive less than a month ago. 

And to top the day off? My husband took our son fishing at a nearby state park. Because he was only going a few yards away from his truck, he left it open...windows down, doors unlocked. Well, someone took the opportunity to get into it and found his checkbook. Things have settled to a dull roar over this delightful turn of events but there's nothing to do until the bank opens on Monday. Wooo-flipping-hoo.

Now, in an effort to do something to take my mind of everything else, I'm working on some photos. I really would like to get my photo mojo back. I took the kids camping at the beach and simply didn't feel like taking photos. We took my daughter's little point-n-shoot but I just don't like it compared to my DSLR as far as resulting photos. 

Anyway, here's a few from last month when I visited the Valhalla farm outside of Westminster.

This little guy was just a couple of days old:

This little guy was a pushy attention hound! 

I reworked this previous posted photo:

Growing is hard work:

This is Lilly.  She was born prematurely and most babies who arrive as early as she did do not survive. The excellent care she received by Kathy and all her helpers means this little girl is going to grow up to be an amazingly beautiful creature. That blue eye? I didn't do a thing to enhance it at all...it is really that blue!  And she has two of them!

Lilly and her mom:

This little guy was *stunning*...his new owner is one darn lucky person!

Hopefully, the colors on this look alright to the rest of you.  I need to do some printing to see what is really happening with my edits.

She's so bright in so many ways

But sometimes, my daughter seems to hide her intelligence.

Tonight's evidence? She decided she needed to know how the horses' pelleted feed tasted like.  So she took a pellet and bit into it.

Apparently, it's not tasty at all.  I wonder if she'd like to try some moistened beet pulp tomorrow?

:::sigh:::

My company a) doesn't believe me when I say I'm married w/two kids or b) has money they can't figure out how to spend so hiring an outside audit firm to do a stupid review of "eligible dependents" seemed like a good place to waste some $$$.

I've worked for this company for almost 13 years. In all of those 13 years I've claimed the same spouse and had one dependent at the time of hire. I added an additional dependent two years into my employment. 

Now I have to PROVE that they are truly eligible dependents by providing copies of our marriage certificate and the children's birth certificates.

This intrusion and waste of MY time is enough to make this overly worked, stressed woman want to crawl into her bed and say "SCREW YOU WORLD!"

PMS doesn't help either.

How? Why?

How can it be that we've already gone from here:

Casey:  First day of kindergarten - August 2003

to here:

Casey:  5th Grade Farwell - June 2009

Six years gets shorter all the time.  Don't even get me started on the fact that in less than 3 months, we'll be dealing with middle school.

Or that in 3 years, we'll be throwing a high school graduation party.

Hello Mr. Time? Could you please slow down for now????

Checking In!

Between work, horses, kids, school, softball...things have been completely crazy around here. I can't believe we're alredy in June. I'm switching to a Typepad template for a bit until I have a few minutes to work on a new banner design.

Yesterday I attended a great clinic at Valhalla Minature Horse Farm.  It was a introduction to driving a miniature horse and cart. I had a great time and learned quite a lot! The other attendees were really friendly and welcoming. I learned about the Mason Dixon Miniature Horse Club and their upcoming events. I cannot wait to learn more and meet more of these great miniature horse people. We're going to go to the show in Thurmont, MD next Sunday to get taste of what that's like!

Much thanks to Kathy and Linda for their great information! Can't wait to learn more from these fabulous ladies :)

And what would a visit to a miniature horse farm be without a couple of pictures of the babies? Here's just a couple of my favorites:

 

 

Here's the first pic with a cool effect from Picnik!

Some Izzy Time

Tonight our friend (and former babysitter) Katie came over to give us some lessons in horse care. Her friend Dave came along too. The idea was to give Izzy a bath, trim some of her mane, give me some pointers on hoof cleaning and anything else she could think of.

It all went pretty well. Katie even worked with Izzy and some lead training. Definitely gave some things to work on myself now that I've seen it done by someone used to working with horses.

We do have our work cut out for us! Here's an updated pic of the little girl. She's still a bit of a fuzzy-wuzzy but little by little the woolies are coming off.

She's ours! And well...so is she!

You know those baby announcements that were/are so popular? The ones that say "Have you heard? Our family has grown by 2 feet!" Pretty cute aren't they?

Well, guess what?  Our family has grown by 8 feet.

I'll let that sink in for a few minutes.

Still confused?  I don't blame you. I think I'm still a little dazed and confused myself.

So it started Saturday.  Casey and I went back to see Fantine.  The seller, Mr. Smith (really that's his name) and I came to an agreement on the price.  We left a deposit.  We discovered that her left eye has turned blue!  She will come home in late July or early August.

That's 4 feet.

Then came Sunday.

As we take a drive to pick up a piece of equipment that he found on Craig's list, my husband very casually mentions that he saw a really cute dog being given away on there. Further mentioned that it reminded him of our first dog, Pickles. My favorite of all the dogs we've had since we've been married (19 years).  He then tells me that they have to find her a new home because she keeps taking off and their home owners association won't allow fencing any of type. Their ground is too rocky for underground fencing. 

Then he talks about the fact we've had three dogs before. 

I mention that we've never had a black dog before.

She's an unspayed female but there are several low cost spay/neuter programs in our area. Our boy is neutered.  It's something we could easily and quickly remedy.

I tried to put it out of my mind. I really did.

Then we came home and he just HAS to show me her picture.  

I equally HAD to write the owner an email and ask when I could meet her.

At 7:00pm, I went, I met, I said yes, and put her in my car.

Her name is Sadie.  Part Border Collie and part Black Lab.  100% sweet. Her and Hermione are having to figure out who's going to be higher on the pack's ladder.  Hermione is at a significant disadvantage as she's outweighed by 30lbs.  She keeps looking at us with such disgust and a hint of betrayl in her eyes.

She's had her first training session with the underground fencing system. She seems to be appropriately concerned about those darn flags! And she seems to be unimpressed by the horses. This will be of particular concern as her herding instincts will have to be kept in check with them.

Craig's list is evil.

Its official...we ARE certifiable

It's all my husband's fault.  He's the one who found the ad. He's the one who insisted I call.  And after I called, he's the one who said we should go look.

Well, that's what Sarah and I did this afternoon.  We went. We looked. We are now hooked.

May I introduce what I hope will be our third (and FINAL!) horse for now:

IF we do get her (and it's not a done deal), she will be named Fantine. Why Fantine? My daughter was in her high school's production of Les Miserables last fall and she is head over heals in love with the whole story.  It's her turn to name the next unnamed animal that comes into our family.  We agreed that Fantine would be a great name. It's prounounced "fahn-teen". We'll likely call her "Teeny" for short.

Again, it's not a done deal.  We'll know something tomorrow evening. And it would be a few months before she came home because we'd have to wait until she's weaned from her mom.

So...that's it.  We are truly, and honestly, certifiably insane at this point.

When someone tells you "it's contagious! you can't just have one!"...LISTEN TO THEM!

We pulled the trigger

On what? On getting Izzy a buddy! Sometime this week (hopefully), Izzy's new sister will be delivered to her new home. Her name is Cha Cha. She's a 10 yr old brown and white paint mare. She's from the same farm as Lexie, the girl we looked at about 3 weeks ago.  We looked at a couple of yearlings today but after much discussion, decided our best choice was to stick with adding an older mare to our "herd". The idea being that the older mare will help Izzy learn how to behave like a good horse :-)

Speaking of Izzy, she's doing really great.  Now if only the dogs would settle down! I think having a pasture buddy will do her a world of good.  Her woolie coat is slowly but surely shedding out.  This darn endless rain we're having around here is making grooming her quite difficult.  Brushing a wet, woolie horse is not an easy task.  In fact, it's basically a waste of time to even try.

Here are some photos of our new girl.  The first two are from the website of her current owner. The last one is one I took when we visited. She was one of our favorites from that visit and I cannot believe she's coming here to live with us.

Isn't that forelock hysterical?  A small trim and some braiding will be in order, I'm thinking.

For those of you in the know...what "color" is she considered to be?

P.S.  As I feared, the blog went through the entire month of April with March's banner.  Hope you enjoy the new one for May.