Happy Halloween!

So in typical me fashion, I very much overscheduled Ian and I for the Halloween weekend, it was nuts! Great, but nuttsss!

Shorts were a bad choice…

On Saturday we were doing a 5k fun run in a town nearby, as a fundraiser for the food bank. I signed us up on a whim, and when we got there I didn’t realize …it was FREEZING out. Like, 3-4 deg freezing. Wow, what a shock! So we weren’t really prepared to be that cold and we had to do a lot of waiting around at the start as it was a very small scale fun run. My muscles tightened up so much that when we started, my arms physically hurt from being so cold. I kept my toque on even?! I felt like I wasn’t wearing anything on my bottom half because my legs were so cold I couldn’t feel my shorts.

My sweet prize!

So we ran, and it was pretty brutal, ha. My lungs were DYING. It wasn’t very flat, I will say that lol and the turnaround had a lot of confusion there (ah, fun runs) but we made it to…4k and finished? So I guess we paid very little $$ and we get a 4k not five hahah. That’s more than fine with me, I was pretty much dying!!

On Friday we carved our pumpkins and of course, Tucker had to try mine…

When we finished (Ian was ahead of me, but there weren’t any other women near me) I was drooling incessantly and felt like my lungs were going to burst out of my chest- they hurt so much, wowza. That set us up for a nice strong emphysema coughing fit for the next two days, ickkk just what you want in a pandemic amirite?

I picked up my prize (which was really nice!) for being the first woman finisher 🙂 and we were off to task #2- ride Oats! I had a pretty ok ride, he was a touch resistant about doing shoulder-fore and I couldn’t quite capture the magic of our lesson, but that’s always the case, isn’t it??

Then we were home again for our next event: Beer tasting/tour with Hoyne Brewery, hosted by UVIC alumni society. It was a blast! I learned so much and Sean was the best storyteller ever. Plus the beer was good too, yessss!

Really nice to listen to!

And then it was time to get our costumes on and take the bus to our friend’s place- they bought a historical mansion and had the most AMAZING Halloween party at it. It was phenomenal!!!!!! Creepy coloured lights, pumpkins, snacks, candies, a great treasure hunt (one of the clues had an infrared camera?!!) that basically stymied us for the whole night, lol, and get this: Dry ice cocktails?!!! OMG. I was in heaven!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xr9cJNTy2WAhttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/xr9cJNTy2WA

A dry ice cocktail with champagne and absinthe!

We had such a nice time I didn’t want the night to end 😦

Until the next morning, when I was in hell….And had to get up for the barn’s Halloween fun show, that I promised I was going to do…Good lord why do I do this to myself?

to be continued…

Growing up is for trees

What a lovely long weekend- and judging by how much sleep I got this weekend, apparently long overdue? It was pretty busy, nevertheless!

High-five!!

Friday the weather dawned grey, drizzly and cold so I rode Oats first in the indoor, and then in the outdoor when I forgot they were turning the sprinklers on and had to vacate- my mistake haha. He felt very forward in the indoor- so much so I was having trouble with my steering- but funny enough, when I moved back outdoor the huge trot I had? Felt totally normal.

That’s the space issue I think- it plays tricks on you! He was good to ride though and we worked through some more trot-canter-walk-trot-canter transitions. I went for a short hill run (5k of hills) after my ride, and we attended a friend’s Canada Day party in the evening. All in all, a fairly good day.

Mr. Oats mid-sneeze

Saturday, we had something special planned- a gallop in the field photoshoot! And the weather finally cleared up, so we did our photoshoot, and it was a BLAST!!! Galloping Oats in the field is one of my most favourite activities. Soooo fun. I think Oats enjoys it just as much as I do, because he doesn’t have to do any boring flatwork haha.

Running in the field is my favourite says Oats!

We then packed up from the barn and headed off to the Cowichan River- it wasn’t as warm as I would like, so I didn’t swim, but it was a nice hike in and felt great to be close to nature again. When we got home, I was pretty tired but I laced up my runners and jogged out for a brief 4k or so light run…In preparation for our 7-year anniversary dinner at the Keg!! Yum! We went all out for it- I had a fabulous cocktail- the NY Sour, and Lobster Sirloin. Mega $$$ but worth it man, worth it.

Gidget hitches a ride.

Sunday was a sunny day again but chilly and breezy. We zipped up island with our dog in tow and our runners and decided to make a good day of it at my in-laws farm! We left our dog with his parents and jogged up Cobble Hill/Mountain, not a big one but there are lots of twisty, steep-ish trails to explore. It was a fairly tiring run, and I even made us go a bit further to make it an even 9km.

It’s hard being a purse-dog

Then it was time for garden picking- it took like hours actually! Croquet, dinner, and Bocce ball. It was late when we got home that night, and we sure made a good day of it. Oats got the day off because I’d ridden him 4 days in a row and we both needed the break.

Baby, you’re driving

And we’re back!

I spent the past week in the Big Apple- NYC on holidays with the husband and my family. Good times were had by all, and wow, it was exhausting too! Here’s a snapshot of the holiday, and I will provide some more details in-depth later. We flew to Regina to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday and landed in a HUGE thunderstorm. Lightning, thunder, it was crazy. We couldn’t get off the plane for 1 hr until the lightning calmed down, and when we did get out, the power was out all throughout the city!

The party was a very nice event, lots of good food/barbecue and pool time. I got kind of sick of being around children (I am NOT a kid person, so sue me…) but it was better when my older cousin and his girlfriend came around. We all went to the lake the next day, because my uncle has a cool boat and we all went tubing! Now that was fun, holy crap he goes fast, and is a really slick boat driver.

I could barely cling on, it was nuts!

And then, at 4:30 am the next morning, it was off to NYC. We rented a place off AirBnB, and it was actually not too bad. TINY but hey, it’s the big city so kind of expected eh?

And man, we did that city right.

Here’s what we did:

• Walked through Times Square
• Visited the Chelsea Market & had dinner there.
  

  Chelsea Market

• Rode the hop-on hop-off bus (sidenote: RIPOFF! Lousy, the best part is getting to sit down and not walk I guess?)
• Walked through So-Ho
• Shopped at Century 21- I bought Crumbs coffee there, and Crumbs went out of business. EVERYONE at Century 21 wanted to grab the coffee.
• Visited Brighton Beach and had fried clam strips at Coney Island
• Went to Williamsburg in Brooklyn and ate at Extra Fancy, bought chocolate at Mast Brothers chocolate and had beer at a German brewhouse
• Saw Les Miserables- it was excellent
• Ate sooooooo much good food
• Visited the East Village and Greenwich Village and splashed around in the fountain featured on ‘Friends’
  

  Fountain in Greenwich

• Walked on the High Line
• Visited the Central Park Zoo- really small and cute. Liked it a lot
• Went to the MoMa- and I was not super impressed. It was ok, but I wanted to see more Roy Lichenstein and maybe some Jeff Koonz

So, exhaustive list eh? I know, it was a crazy week!!