Fulfilling my responsibilities ;)

Okay Nicole, I'm finally getting around to your tag! Sorry it's taken so long...

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW ME?

Four jobs I have had in my life:

1. Babysitter (imagine that! ;))
2. Horse farm worker (several different farms throughout HS)
3. Summer Missions Program Core Staff (at Gordon)
4. Barn Manager and Training Assistant

Movies I would watch over and over:

1. Out of Africa (Kenya and Meryl Streep... it doesn't get much better than that!)
2. You've Got Mail (daisies are definitely the friendliest flowers!)
3. Emma (I love the hair-dos!)
4. Hmm... it's late and I'm blanking right now. I'll come back and update when I think of something else (which will probably happen when I'm lying in bed tonight trying to fall asleep!)

Four Places I have lived:

1. Nairobi, Kenya
2. Alexandria, VA
3. Williamstown, MA
4. Ndu, Cameroon

Four TV shows I love to watch:

Hmm, this is hard since I don't watch much TV, but junior year when I lived with a bunch of other girls we enjoyed:
1. Friends (borrowing as many DVD seasons as possible!)
2. What Not to Wear
3. Cooking shows on the Food Network (I watched these a bunch while we were housesitting last summer in MT), especially Rachel Ray.
4. Yep, that's pretty much it for me. I'm not much of a TV girl...

Four websites I visit daily:

Right now? I don't even get on the web every day! At school though, these were definite dailies:

1. Exchange - the Gordon email server. This is still my top one.
2. The Generous Wife
3. Go.Gordon - the student info page
4. Blogs

Four places I have been on vacation:

1. Surfside, SC (next to Myrtle Beach)
2. England - London and Stratford-on-Avon (sort of... it was also for school, but felt like vacation!)
3. The Smokies of Tennessee
4. Shenandoah

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Cheesecake
2. My grandmother's banana bread
3. Good carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
4. Anything my mom makes (except fried okra!) - in the summer, particularly corn relish

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. In bed!
2. Anywhere in Europe (particularly Italy, England again, or France/Paris)
3. On a tropical island somewhere
4. On a fancy horse

More Pictures (Finally!)

I've tried several different evenings to post these pictures, and the connection keeps cutting out on me. Ugh, dial up is such a pain after being spoiled by Gordon's fast connection for four years! Anyway, here are a couple more pictures from the show:

Here is Patrick, one of Jamie's ponies, wearing Luke's cowboy hat. He's only been sat on once, but came to the show to hang out and get used to things, since he'll be a fancy show pony one day.

Here's a picture of our friend Kate and her horse Ajax. It was the first show ever for both of them and they did great!

Here's another picture of pretty Annie waiting in line for ribbons to be announced.

I call this picture, "the cowboy and the equestrian." Too bad both Annie and Luke had their eyes closed! Oh well, there's always next time.

This is my favorite picture from the show - the gorgeous girl with her reserve champion ribbon and her kind eye up close. She kept moving her head around, but Galen was able to snap this shot and it's so cool!

We had a bit of a crazy weekend up here when the temperature dropped to 45 on Fri. night and it dumped rain, which wasn't in the forecast. We had a bunch of horses outside without sheets, and they were all shivering Sat. morning. When horses get cold like that it's very easy for them to colic, so we were super worried. Thankfully, we only had one horse get sick, and she wasn't too bad. She was living outside and got chilled, so had a bit of a stomach ache for a couple days, but we managed to nurse her back to health on our own over a couple days. However, it required going up to the barn every 2-3 hours on Sat. and Sun. nights, so I'm beat! But now she's better and she's been so sweet that we've decided to go ahead and saddle her tomorrow and start training her to sell.

I also had a great session with Appy this afternoon, a 3-year-old appaloosa/mustang gelding that was given to Jamie last year. I've worked with him about 7 times, put a saddle on him for the 4th time today, and he was so good that I'll ride him for the first time tomorrow! So that's exciting. Maybe we'll even get some pictures.

Well, it's starting to get late so I'm heading up to do night check and then to bed. I'll try and visit everyone else's blogs in the next couple of days, sorry I haven't been keeping up! Hope all's well with everyone; let us know how you're all doing!

Take care,

Erin

Anniversary and a Horse Show

Wow, it's hard to believe that one year ago today Luke and I got married. It's been fun remembering our wedding this morning. So far we are enjoying a quiet, restful day at home; we're hoping to head out later to do a little shopping and have a nice evening. With all the business in our lives these days, it's so nice to just take a day and relax together. We talked about making plans, or "doing" something, but decided we just wanted to spend some restful time together, which has been great.

We celebrated in a different way yesterday, a way that seems quite appropriate for us - we went to a horse show! It was our first show since we've been married, and my first time competing in over five years. I took one of Jamie's training horses, Annie, who I've been working with a lot since we've been here. She is a sweet, beautiful, Belgian-Thoroughbred mare who just turned 7 and is 16.3 hands tall (she's a big girl!). Jamie rescued her and her sister (who has since been sold) a couple of years ago, but hadn't had time to work with Annie consistently since then. She was skin and bones when she came, incredibly nervous, couldn't be caught, scared of everything, and had only been ridden a handful of times. But she's been progressing beautifully, and has wildly exceeded everyone's expectations. She's been a joy to ride.

At the show yesterday we did the walk-trot division, since we just started cantering her last week. She absolutely loved the show ring and was relaxed and unflappable all day, which is amazing for her! We did four out of the six walk-trot classes (we didn't do the halter or trail classes), got three blue ribbons, one red, and were reserve champions! So it was a great day. Here are some pictures of my wonderful girl:

Galen, an amazing young rider at the farm, took these pictures. She's a great photographer too, and I'll post some more of her pictures tomorrow. Now Luke and I are off to do night check at the barn and then head to bed. Take care and keep us posted on your lives!