Grand Opening!

Well, once again we're back from a crazy weekend in NY! We arrived at 8:30 on Thurs. night and unloaded all of our stuff that I had packed the week before. We didn't stay up super late Thurs. night, but we were up bright and early Friday morning and up to the barn by 7. Luke worked on trim in the tack room while I helped get horses outside and strip all the stalls of their bedding. Then several of us started scrubbing the stalls boards to get them clean. We started at about 10:30, and didn't finish until 5pm. Yep, that's 6 1/2 hours bent over, scrubbing. I'm still sore. Luke came out about 4 and helped finish the last few stalls, while some of the other girls and I started putting clean bedding in the stalls that were done and bringing horses in. After feeding the horses we started cleaning the tack room, which was full of stain, varnish, wood scraps, sawdust, horse tack, garbage, you name it. About 9:30pm Jamie's friend Kate and I headed down to the house to start working on flyers for the Grand Opening, giving info about the farm, upcoming events (the schedule I posted last week), and a timeline of the day. We also started working on small signs with names and info to go on the stalls of the horses that were going to stay in because they are for sale or were going to be used in a demo during the day. Jamie came down about 11:00, and we wrestled with the printer for awhile. Kate left and Luke went to bed about 12:30, and Jamie and I finally headed to bed at 2am. We were up at 5:15 taking showers, went up to the barn to feed and make sure everyone had arrived there to get chores done, and then Jamie and I drove around putting directional signs up at some of the tricky intersections while Luke and Eric finished up a few pieces of trim in the tack room and everyone else got the horses out and the stalls cleaned. By the time we got back, tables had been set up in the tack room, and we all ran around putting up parking signs, grooming demo horses, assigning tasks, handing out shirts to the employees... basically whatever needed to be done. The first visitors started arriving about 10:15, and by the time Jamie's first demo rolled around at noon, there were over 85 people there watching. Throughout the day we had around 250 visitors stop by, and some stayed for a good amount of time. Kate's husband James did all the food for lunch and afternoon snacks, and it was amazing! The Grand Opening officially ended at 5, and most everyone was gone by 5:30. Then the employees and close friends all gathered for a champagne toast and celebration with more food in the tack room. It was a great evening, and the day as a whole was a huge success.

We all crashed in bed by 9:15, and Luke and I slept for 11 hours! We left around 10, got home at 1:30, I sang in a concert at 3, got home at 5:30 and went to bed, woke up for an hour at 8:30 for some dinner and got a little work done, then went back to bed and slept until 7:30 this morning! Now it's 10pm and I've been fading fast for the past hour, so I'm headed to bed, still sore and tired from the weekend, but very happy, pleased with how things went, and even more excited about working at HGF this coming year.

Oh, and we met a really nice Christian family and have two new leads on potential living places, so we're praising God and looking forward to seeing how He will provide for us in this new venture. There were some other exciting things that happened today, but I just don't have the energy to write about them now. Sometime soon...