Sunday Stills

Okay, here I am checking out the chicken coop'd'villa before the chickens made it their home.

Getting to supple

Getting to forward

Wordless Wednesday

A Bump In The Road

Baythoven and Sarah had a major disappointment at the end of the summer. They had qualified for the Arabian Sporthorse Regionals earlier in the year, but as the show got closer it became clear that something wasn't right with the horse. Sarah had taken him to the Region 6 Youth Overnight Camp at Devonwood. Baythoven pulled out all the stops and acted his worst. The clinician ended up riding him at one point, and rumor has it that he nearly unseated her!

After the camp out he continued to act out with plenty of bucking. We called out our chiropractor, but for the first time even this didn't help. The DH and I decided to have a lameness work up done on him. It turns out Bay was having some arthritis issues with his hocks, and he was in pain. We were asking him to use those hocks and he was trying to tell us that he was uncomfortable. It would have been much easier if our horse could talk.

We ended up having his hocks injected. We gave him some time off. He is back in work now and moving beautifully. Our vet tells us the best thing for him is to keep moving. So we will keep showing as long as he seems comfortable.

Sarah already has a list of shows she is interested in for this year, and they will be doing OHSET again too.

Disaster Strikes

I am not a domestic goddess. Just ask my DH. Today I made the supreme sacrifice and went through one of my cookbooks for a recipe for homemade butternut squash soup. I wrote down the ingredients I would need from the store. I went out into the rain and drove to The Market of Choice. I chose that market in particular although there are two others closer to my house and easier to get to. Why? At The Market of Choice I can buy butternut squash already peeled and cubed in 2 lb tubs. I told you...I am not a domestic goddess.

Of course I went to the market at the worst possible time. I drove right past the high school as it was letting out, and I got stuck in traffic. It took 20 minutes to do a 10 minute drive. Once I arrived, I found what I needed fairly easily and made my purchases and returned home.

I chopped onion and Canadian bacon. I steamed the squash. I cooked the onion and Canadian bacon to a golden brown in olive oil. I combined the steamed squash and chicken stock with the Canadian bacon, onion, and olive oil and covered and simmered for 15 minutes. It smelled heavenly. I poured the mixture into my blender to puree. The only step left was to return the soup to the pan, reheat, and sprinkle with fresh sage. Yum.

That is when disaster struck. I picked up the blender and the bottom fell out. Literally. The bottom fell out of the blender. My beautiful soup went everywhere and my hand was badly burned. No trip to the hospital was needed, but the sucker hurt bad enough that I had to use cold water for the entire clean up as I couldn't stand to have hot water on the hand. I had soup on the counter top, soup on the floor, soup dripping down the front of the cabinet. I'm not sure if my blender is ruined or not because soup oozed into the casing around the motor. I even had soup all over my sweatshirt, jeans, and shoes.

Shortly thereafter the DH called. He was on his way home and wanted to know if he should stop and pick up something for dinner...we had Safeway's Chicken Taco Soup.