Wild Horses are Such Beauty

I know that the majority of you guys my readers love horses! I am very passionate about horses and I WISH I lived in an area that had wild horses that I could contribute my time to like Pam Nickoles of "Pam Nickoles Photography" . Her blog is always full of pictures and beautiful stories of the journey's she has traveled for this cause. Her most recent post has some youtube videos of clips from her "wild horse videos". The very first video in the sets that she has posted is "The Stallion and the Foal", I think this is truly one of the most heartbreaking yet magnificent things I have ever seen! I highly encourage you all to check it, and here is a link to the actual story of "The Stallion and the Foal"

Wordless Wednesday

Okay not so much "wordless" but sometimes you've gotta break the mold, right?! My brother is getting married in a few weeks and guess who is doing the pictures?! Yep that's right, little ol me!! So this past Saturday we went so I could check out the chapel lighting and he wanted us to see the "saloon" that the reception will be held in! I am SO excited about this venue, it is an old saloon in "Old Cowtown" which is a living history museum! This setting is based on life in the 1870's, and it is absolutely fantastic! I am SO very excited to do these pictures! So when talking with my bro we were tossing ideas around and he threw this one at me......

SERIOUSLY?!..........



OH yeah he is serious alright!!! He LOVES this! He and his wife-to-be are thrilled about doing these shots! I told him that he absolutely CRACKS me up!! There is NO WAY you would catch me laying in one of those for fun LOL!!!

This REALLY made me kinda scared LOL!!



But they are LOVIN it!!!



I will definitely have a ton of fun pictures to share in a few weeks!!!

FFA Work Auction...And Yes I Sold my Son Again!!

Last year as a freshman J did his very fist FFA Work Auction. This is where all of the FFA students and faculty are auctioned off to a buyer in the community to work a maximum of 8 hours! Last year when J was auctioned off he was bought by one of the local banks and they did NOT make any of the kids work their hours!! J was thrilled to have gotten off so easy LOL!

About a week or so they held the annual auction and chili feed for his sophomore year, for some strange reason J was very nervous about this one! To me it was strange because last year he was so calm about it! He for some reason was feeling like maybe no one would want to buy him LOL! The Hubby told him to go on stage and flex his muscles and do push ups! J wasn't thinking so!!

So finally when his turned arrived he headed up with a bit of nerves at his side, but that quickly faded and a smile braced his face (no pun intended since he is a brace face) as he soon realized that he had a bidding war going on for him! And NO it wasn't me bidding on him LOL!! One of the bidders was a local organization and the other was his very Best Buddys step-dad! He was so thrilled when his "other" dad won the bid!! So he was told that for his work he and his Buddy will be collecting limbs and they will hold a HUGE bonfire that night! I think that is an ingenious idea!! The boys love bonfires, so this is right up their alley!!

OH SO much better now!!



Auctioneer in action!!




J and his "buyer"

It's Only Been a Week and We Take Our First Emergency Trip to the Vet!!!

I feel like in purchasing a new horse one of the most uneasy feelings for me comes from not knowing their complete medical history. I mean sure we ask the person we are buying the horse from for all the information they have but maybe sometimes it isn't enough... So when we made our recent purchase of Krissy the Hubby's and mine's "kind of" joke was that our luck she'll break a leg as soon as we get her home! But in all honesty I fear the switching feeds on a horse, forage and whatever "grain" they get. Krissy was fed alfalfa hay and a 14% horse feed. Here we are feeding her brome hay and a different brand of 14% horse pellets.

So today the goal was for DD and Krissy to get some practice time in. So this afternoon the Hubby went to pull her out of her corral and then comes in and says "Krissy has welts all over her neck and shoulders".....GREAT, she has hives! So I head out to take a peek at her and sure enough she has broken out in hives, I give her a thorough check over on everything else and she is good except for she felt as though she was a little hot. Then she started having a mix of regular and watery stool. So I call my AWESOME Vet & friend and we agreed Krissy needed a dose of Dex so in we went.

Krissy waiting to leave...



By the time we got there some of the welts had gotten a few inches big and started to move back past her neck onto her body. Dr G gave her a good examination and decided that this was a simple case of an allergic reaction so she got the Dex and some Tri-Hist granules to take 2 x daily for 3 days. While I am glad she is fine, I am a bit annoyed that we likely won't figure out what caused this allergic reaction... I am definitely praying that this is the end of it! On a positive note I did learn that Krissy could care less about needles sticking her so that makes my future stick jobs that much easier!! Nothing worse than a horse with a needle phobia!!

Don't ask me why I didn't take any up close shots of the hives....Brain malfunction?! If you click on this picture you can see a few of the welts



Poor baby!!!

True Friends Last a Lifetime....And Lead to Road Trips!!

You know there is something to be said about true friendships... I am very blessed to have lifelong true friends! Some I have been friends with most of my life and some I have been friends with since my teenage years and of course I have also met some wonderful new friends as well.

I recently was reunited with one of my longest and dearest friends and I am absolutely thrilled!! This was a friend that helped me through the biggest of struggles through my teenage years and being a young mom. She too was a young mom and always the most awesome example of what can really be done when life takes a different course. There was a group of 4 of us and we together were like a family. No one else in our lives understood the things we went through but together we got through it all!

During what should have been my friends happiest time of her life, meeting the man she "thought" she had always dreamed of really turned into the most miserable 10 years of her life... After she started dating this man he basically took over her life and kept her away from everyone who loved her more than anything!! She stayed with this man for 10 years before RE-finding her strength and leaving his butt!! So finally after all of these years we found each other again through none other than Facebook LOL! Man I love Facebook! We immediately got together for dinner and it was like never being separated at all! We talked for hours and picked up like we'd been together this whole time! So then it was decided that us and our other Best Friend were taking a road trip!

This past weekend the girls drove the hour trek out to my house and off we went on our trip to The Hardrock Hotel and Casino! Can I just say right now that I LOVE that place!! I honestly have never stayed in a hotel as great as this one! The rooms were fantastic and reasonably priced!! And their employee's were down right awesome!!

We had such a blast!! I brought ALL of our old photo's of us and our kiddo's together and we had such a blast going through them all! It is so amazing how a picture can just take you back!! This was honestly the funnest time I have had in YEARS!!! There is just nothing like being with your girlfriends and acting silly and pretending like your not getting old LOL!!

SO I am here to say that TRUE Friendships last a lifetime and I am SO very thankful for that!!

My very awesome girls!!


We have been friends since we were 8 years old!!



So glad to have found her again!!



Best Friends Forever.....BFF's yeah that's right, I just said BFF!!



Craziness I tell ya!! NO not us!! The fact that our other girl didn't focus the camera first LOL!



Aren't they SO sweet when they sleep?!



OR not!! LOVE them!!

Wordless Wednesday

Finally!! We have a new Rodeo horse!!

These last few weeks have been kind of long and never ending! Not in a bad way, just constantly busy! We have been spending time selling horses while also shopping for the new one. So one of our decisions in the process of selling one was to take DD's Black mare to TX and have her there to sell as there was a family interested in her (which we did not do because a family in a town near by ended up wanting her LOL). So on the trip the Hubby also planned to haul another horse to TX for his sister. So during our search for a new horse the Hubby happened to come across an ad at a very well known horse ranch in Whitesboro, TX called "Dynasty Equine" for a 7 yr old bay mare named "Harmony" that sounded pretty promising. So since we were already planning a trip down there we made an appt for last Friday afternoon.

So we left on our trek to TX early Friday morning and arrived at the ranch about 2 pm. The way they work is you tell them the horse you are interested in seeing and what your goal is for the horse you purchase, then they bring out a selection of horses that fit that criteria and the horse you originally inquired about. So we had 3 horses to look at, one was Harmony, one was Krissy, and a gelding (whose name I can't remember LOL). So after going over all of the horses we remembered having seen "Krissy" on the site and really liked her but she was out of the price range we wanted. So I inquired about that and they told me that the owner was willing to let her go for a better price. We spent some time with the horses and quickly determined Harmony was not a good fit for us as she was very standoffish and did not have a calmness to her. Krissy however did... She was beautifully built and OH SO SWEET!! SO we saddled her up and DD spent a couple of hours riding her and while riding her the trainer Amanda (who is a SUPER awesome girl) gave her tons of tips on some of her bad habits she picked up this last rodeo season.

So after some deliberation the decision was made! Krissy was going home with us!! Krissy is an 8 yr old sorrel mare 15h and is beautiful!! DD loves her and she is a super easy mare. She has been rodeo'd in many of the different events before and has a super disposition!

We had a pretty long ride back home and Krissy was a little stiff coming out of the trailer so the Hubby decided we would wait a few days before we start riding her!

This was their video with the ad online for Krissy