Getting back to normal.... whatever that is

We've had power for over a week and a half now, but there are still several people that we know without it. Still seeing lots of blue tarps on the roofs of many houses where hurricane Ike took them out.

Went back to work the day after we got back in town since my hospital had power, and man was it crazy, crazy, crazy. I was scheduled to work the next 19 days straight (teach me to take a week off!) but I got one of the other doctors to pick up a shift for me in the middle so that I'd have at least one day off in that stretch. Whew.

I've been riding a few times since we got back...had a great show jumping lesson, and Ronan's feeling good. We've been training so hard the last year, I'm just trying to let him take it easy for a bit this fall. We have a GHCTA show at Pine Hill next weekend on my birthday, and we'll be going out to the Holly Hill USEA Fall horse trials near Shreveport, LA at the end of the month for his first outing at a recognized Training level event. Hermione will be coming along with us to that one. It should be colder out there, so hopefully, she and Ronan can wear their matching rugs.

Grant's birthday was last week (Sept. 23) HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANT!!! We've been out a few times, and my mother made him a Wall-E cake that was really cool. Last night we went out to dinner, and Grant wore his new jeans and his chuck's, so it appears that he's quite happy with his presents. I also got him this DVD set of lighting workshop videos for photography form Strobist that he has really been wanting for a long time. We started watching them the night that I gave them to him, and I quickly fell asleep....oh well. He loves them!













Aside from Grant's birthday, last week was just hard, so I'm hoping that this week will get a bit better.
I'm participating in Ali Edwards "A Week in the Life" challenge that she's posting on her blog, so hopefully, it will give me a bit of a different perspective on my everyday, take lots of pictures, do some reflecting, etc.

Safe, but in the dark

We're safely back in Houston. Our pets are fine, and our house weathered the storm perfectly as far as we can tell. We have (natural) gas and water, but no electricity or phone/dsl service. Cellular service is flaky, but text messages and voicemails do seem to arrive eventually.

Ronan is happy back in his barn. The barn lacks power, but Ronan doesn't really care.

Rain, Rain, Rain....oh, and more rain

Ok...so we travel all of the way to Chicago, just to get poured on at a horse show like we do in Texas! (I swear...ever since we bought the Irish horse!) Oh, well. At least it didn't rain on us until our show jumping phase. The cross country for other levels yesterday was wretched, slippery, yuck. They had to keep taking out jumps because the footing was getting so bad. They changed the cross country that was supposed to be today to tomorrow, but I'm a bit worried that they're not going to be able to have it at all. That would truly suck.

It could be worse! We could be at home dealing with hurricane Ike. However, it seems that we're going to have to drive through it a bit to get home, so I'm not sure yet when we're leaving yet. Something tells me that Ronan's not going to be too happy traveling through nasty roads and stop and go traffic from the storm.

We're still bubbly from our 6th place finish, so it's not too bad.

Lost power at the house, which means that I also have no email, since our mail server is at the house. If you need something, just leave me a message here on the blog.

6th Place at the American Eventing Championships!!!

Nothing could be more groovy!
I just wanted to come, have a good time, not fall off, and not get eliminated so that we actually got to do all 3 phases....and what happens? We kick butt!

I finished on my dressage score of 28.4! Really great. Fantastic. Super! I was tied for 5th, and lost the tie because I was farther away from the optimum time for cross country.....Yeah, like 25 seconds early...only 6 seconds away from being penalized for going too fast....so no complaints here! Guess that he's pretty much set for his training pace!

Check out this picture from the USEA web site.


Oh! and I won prizes!!! and MONEY!!!
Yes! I actually won some money!! (Dr. Mangold will be so proud!)

I can't remember everything, but...I won $250, a $100 gift certificate for the Bit of Britain tack store, a pair of SSG gloves, a pair of ice boots (I've always wanted a set of these for Ronan), and something else too...can't quite remember what. But, holy crap, I've been doing this for 20+ years, and I've never ever won any money!!! Woo-hoo.
Oh, and our beautiful green ribbon ain't too shabby either!

Our show jumping round was great. I think that he would have done it regardless....really acting like he knows his job now, but I rode great...exactly how I wanted. The course was very nice and flowing. No real scary jumps, only 1 two stride combination. Oh, but it was pouring down rain, and had been for the last several hours, so that put a bit of a twist on things. Very sloppy, but not slippery....Hey, thank goodness for the Irish horse! Ronan was like...what mud? what puddles? All I see are show jumps!

Ronan got 3 stud muffins yesterday, and lots of hay, so all was good in his little Ronan world.

28.4 !

Wow! I finally got to an internet connection.

The show is just awesome!! Lamplight Equestrian Center is beautiful. Really great facility.

We are currently tied for 5th after cross country !!!! How totally cool is that??
Dressage was yesterday, and he was pretty great! Not his best test, but a good one, and no silly spooking stuff. Very focused, very grown up. :)

X-country was today! I walked the course 3 1/2 times, so I was ready, and didn't get lost. Ronan was great. Listening and moving on! He didn't look at any of the fences, just kept on jumping. Really good boy! Oh! and he was moving on so well, that we almost got penalties for going too fast. We were supposed to be going 400 meters per minute. He wasn't noticeably fast, very balanced, not running of or on the forehand at all, just more at a training pace, I guess rather than the Novice pace. I did get him slowed down at the end, so didn't have any time faults, but it was close.
The course was challenging in some ways, but not crazy hard or trappy.
As far as fences go, there was 2 water combinations, a half coffin, a wimpy trakhener, and a very wide in length and narrow in width corner. There were 4 or 5 combinations. It was really nice. Our run was very uneventful, which to me is always a good thing, but may have appeared to be a bit boring. Ronan seemed to be really having fun, but was bummed out when we finished because he couldn't jump anymore. He felt like he was all warmed up and ready to go!

Tomorrow is showjumping, so I'm off to braid again. (He looked pretty spiffy for dressage.)
Keeping our fingers crossed that he'll be a good boy tmorrow. I can't wait! (more about the actual trip, etc. later...)

Oh and, I hear that there's a hurricane that's going to hit us back home. Lovely. At leaast Ronan's already evacuated.

I'll try and add pics to my post later on.

Wow! It's almost here! And I'm so not ready!!

Ronan pretending to be Rocky

Well....Here's the tentative schedule...

Saturday, 9/6 - Sarah works 8-6, rides Ronan (courses) then finishes up some packing, panics, etc.
Grant, works diligently on preparing for the trip, and does all of the stuff that Sarah thought that she'd get to, and of course, did not. : ) (I know...he's awesome.)

Sunday 9/7 - Sarah works 9-6...Grant picks up Dad from the airport in the afternoon. After work, Sarah takes a short nap, then finishes everything else and we depart for Lamplight ASAP...probably will be like midnight or something.

Monday 9/8 - We drive forever, and Ronan is bored. Hopefully, arriving at lamplight sometime late that night.

Wed. 9/10 Dressage (Ronan is lovely)

Thurs. 9/11 Cross country (Ronan is bold and kicks butt (not Sarah's))

Fri. 9/12 Show jumping (Ronan is awesome!)

Not sure when we're leaving yet. It'll depend upon how things are going, how much fun Ronan is having, and if Ronan is bummed and or rammy because he hasn't been turned out in a week!

I don't have to be back at work until Tuesday....but, I'll be working every single other day in September. : )

More later!!!

Trailer woes...

Ok...so...still having trailer woes... : (

Tried Laura's trailer out this past weekend, and well....

1.) He really didn't fit much better in it than in mine.

2.)The yellow truck/yellow submarine/big yellow taxi pulled that big sucker just fine.

3.)Her super huge long trailer is actually easier to turn and back up than my little Sooner trailer!

4.) Somehow, the balance wasn't right for my truck, and the front of her trailer weighed down the back of my truck too much...Kind of scary.

5.)So....We're going to take ours instead, and just open up the divider and see how that goes. We tried it the other day, and he seemed just fine.

6.)However, our AC unit still shifts some when we're trailering, so if Grant doesn't get back up on the roof and shift it back.... it rains in my trailer (inside the living quarters) Will try and take it to Bunkhouse and get that fixed before we go.

7.) The good news is that Grant secretly ordered me a new memory foam mattress off of ebay so that hopefully, my back won't hurt so much when sleeping in the trailer. : ) I love that man.