Airplanes and houses

Here is a pic of our subdivision (and house) from the air. I really like living here (with the exception of a few people) its pretty, rural, and sunny most of the time. John doesn't like the weather but its really not too bad, if it does snow it is usually melted by noon... the benefits of living in the high desert!

Mindy's Wedding

So these last couple of months have been a blur! Between Alaska, Mindy's Wedding, and surgery, I can't believe it's almost August! This is one of the few pics that turned out well from John's sisters wedding. This is John's cousin and I playing bartender before the wedding. Too bad there was no booze back there at the time :)

So these are a few from our cruise in May to Alaska. We cruised the inside passage, took a float plane, and got to go into the Yukon Territory!

So this is Polly. Polly was our pinata at our Cinco de Mayo party at our neighbors. Polly was stuffed with alcohol, those little bottles, but we had to make sure we got the plastic ones, spilt booze is definitely a party foul! So the bat actually left with a friend who had to go fix a water heater, so we literally used a big stick. We let all the old people take cracks a Polly, and this is what was left of Polly, mostly there just missing feet!

Jack Vs Flop....Winner is Jack!

It's Monday I've just gotten home from work and am frantically looking for a package to Las Vegas to go see the Fei World Cup (which I never did find). Our sliding doors are open and I hear dogs barking...a little odd because ours have bark collars but the neighbors don't....So after about 2 min of this I get up to go look...at this point our neighbors are shouting at us that our dogs are fighting...GREAT...Why not?...but on my frantic run down there I'm thinking what about the collars.? I reach them only to discover that they had bitten/ripped them off each other....great...so I go about breaking them up, the fun part. So I grab Floppy first, really because he was the closest, pry his jaws off Jack then start to drag him away and to my surprise Jack turns around and bites Flop again! At this point I could have killed him! So I am screaming for John to come and get Jack...some neighbor who has a dog that I haven't managed to place yet is trying to talk to me through the fence..why? I haven't figured out yet..I think I heard something like they were barking at her dog and then turned on each other? Anyway John comes down and picks Jack up and we drag them into their separate cages. Spend about 10min looking for the clippers hold Jack and Flop down to see what war wounds they each had. Jack not so bad, some scrapes on the neck (Flop had these to, probably from the collars being dragged off each other) a small puncture wound on his leg and a scape on his chest overall not bad...Scrubbed it with betadine threw some hydrogen peroxide on it and entederm and called it good. On to the Flop, Flop did not fair so well (he's fine but definitely got the short end of the stick!) Puncture wound on the top of his head, puncture would on his ear (at first I thought it went threw but it didn't) and a puncture wound on his neck along with the scratches...Same as with Jack, betadine, hydrogen peroxide, entederm, both got anti-biotics and Rimadyl. Flop got the added fun of the ice pack, my biggest concern was that his head and ear would swell before the anti-inflammatory would kick in so that's what these pics are Flop with ice pack wrapped to his head:) He was relatively good about it and we did it twice Monday night and have cleaned the punctures everyday since then, and he knows when we are going to do it, he looks really sad and tries to run!

Mr. Neeks!

Ok so I've been a little slack on blogging, but here are some pics of Mr. Neeks aka Fallen Leaf. We had our first (and so far only because of weather and the FEI show in Vegas) lesson with Jose Luis and he was great! He has a great system, he has 2 battery packs with head phones on one and a mic on the other so I clipped the pack to my sweater and put the earphones in and it was great! No yelling across the arena, or to those of you who know the wind, plus since it was a nice day the planes landing at ABQ Sunport were right over head. Mr. Neeks being the trooper he is didn't flinch though :) Although it might help that he has smaller planes go right by his paddock. Jose Luis gave me some good things to work on so I have actually been riding almost every day. I also found a great little tack store in Santa Fe that had consignment saddles, so I found a great dressage saddle for pretty cheap! So I tried cantering Mr. Neeks this week before John leaves and he was of course great, I think someone did a little more work with him than we anticipated since he got off the track. Anyways no riding today its snowing so hard I can't see across the runway!! And yes I know my position isn't that great...

I figured this was a fitting picture to put up in honor of our friend Randy who died Monday in an airplane crash.

Not Fun

My poor mother was commandeered into watching our "herd" while I had surgery in Houston. Knock on wood so far she hasn't had too many problems. So we are heading back to see her tomorrow, she has been there for almost three weeks, and it seems that our recently acquired dog (Floppy) has fallen in love with her. Floppy also happens to like Mommy Sue's other dogs, so I think it is fine if she takes him home. She keeps insisting that doesn't want him, but I think this is just an act. So I ended up having two surgeries. One on my nose (since apparently, unknown to me) I broke it a few years ago when I fell off (not sure which horse). And I ended up having a cyst on my ovary. The worst thing about surgeries is waking up from them and leaving. Honestly an hour after I wake up, they are kicking you out. John is a good husband and is faithfully waiting in the chair next to my bed when the nurse comes in and says, "She can get dressed and leave now, BUT she has to stay in bed while she gets dressed." Huh? apparently this is some new thing they instituted, no doubt because of lawyers and people falling and such. But seriously has anyone ever tried this? I would rate this up there with climbing Mt. Everest, without a sherpa! John did his best mind you I'm only half awake, and I have gauze pads taped (yes taped) to my face under my nose, AND I have two incisions in my stomach to try and avoid. I did mange to get dressed and then of course they have to take you out in a wheel chair (another lawyer thing I'm sure). It kind of reminded me of being at the dentist when he's trying to talk to you...Nurse "Which one is your car?" Me in wheelchair with thing taped on face "Thhad oonnn." So anyways I'm excited to be heading home tomorrow, though our friend has been great about letting us crash in his spare bedroom, plus he just had his first baby (well his girlfriend did) so it was super great of him to let us stay here with all that going on! So its Adios Houston for now!

Starfish Cat

This is Fat Ass. She is a Manx the largest of our "Cat Herd."

Ok it's offical now we have a new pony to put in the barn! He's 5 and off the track so we will see how he does, we won't know for a while since I won't be doing anything with him for the next month while we are gone, so he gets a month vacation!

Ok this is a little better picture of the barn and of course all the scrap wood in front of it!

Barn!!

Ok I finally got the barn pictures!!! The barn is now being used for hay storage, though we did ride in there once...glad we have it up now though since it is cold and snowy...You can't tell from the pic but there is a little bit of trim work that still needs to be done, but close enough for now!