Fading frontier

We had a lovely weekend for the start of November. It’s been so warm- almost freakishly so, coming off a really cold October. Apparently it was the coldest October in 80 years, and then now it’s been the nicest November that I can recall. Funny eh?

 

Our view for the weekend. 

We rented a house in Sooke (my friend rented it for oh, about 11 of us…) to celebrate a whole bunch of late- October birthdays, my husband being one of them. We had such a blast! It was really chill, the house was big and since we got their earliest, we nabbed the biggest and best master bedroom. Plus we had our family with us (dog and bunny).

A lot of this

We went on a short hike to Mystic Falls, and it was so warm on Saturday I couldn’t even believe it! No toques or gloves needed.

We enjoyed the hot tub, sauna (though on Saturday night the sauna made me feel sick, ugh!), ate and drank sooooo much. Yeah! We do group breakfasts and dinners, so Ian and I with our friend Jared managed Saturday morning’s breakfast (crepes- sweet and savoury). Delicious but we were a few crepes short unfortunately! We will have to make more next time.

Ian apparently doesn’t know how to smile

Dinner was an amazing greek chicken night, with salad and greek potatoes and bread. YUM! I ate a ton. Probably why I felt sick in the sauna, come to think of it now…

Gidget enjoyed a lot of attention this weekend

Breakfast the next day was amazing…Home-made Challah bread, which I have never had before! Turns out one of the guys in the group is a really good baker in his own right, who would have thought eh? It was soooooo good.

We finished up the weekend by visiting the Sheringham Lighthouse. It was neat! It felt really good to sit back, relax and take a few days off from ‘real life’ since things have been just crazy busy in Oct (Kelowna race weekend, Ian’s birthday, Oktoberfest, MEC half-marathon, my mom’s birthday, my parents staying at my place for a few days, etc etc…just nuts!).

The lighthouse

I always cherish these weekends. Ah, so nice.

Way Yes

I had a very nice weekend- still managing some difficult aspects of life, but I feel like I’m hopefully taking the route that leads to me feeling better about it. This weekend I had a LOT of great friend time, me time, horse time, run time and everything!

We remember.

Friday I had a dressage lesson – where we worked on a canter exercise. It was tough! I had to cut the lesson a bit short to run out to the Westshore for my friend and namesake’s birthday celebration 🙂

Saturday, riding and running. My ligament injury is not 100% but slowly improving run by run. It was a bit painful and ‘tugging’ on my run, but you know what, it was better than it has been- so I’ll take it!

Just a good day- photo by Lindsay. 

Saturday night was visiting with friends- I brought dessert and drank some (a lot?) of wine. Haha. This was in preparation for Sunday’s big event…Bringing the horses to THE BEACH!! Yes, in November?! Hahaha. It was great though. They managed to keep their hair on mostly, Oats was a bit anxious and nippy with some of the other horses, and he spooked at a dog, but yeah for it being November, cold and windy, and a bunch (6 total) of horses? Very good. 🙂

Got home in the afternoon and had to get ready to host in-laws at our place for dinner. Busy busy! It was a lovely evening and the dinner my husband made was fantastic! I also drank a lot of wine, hahahah.

Monday- counseling session to work on some of the issues that have been challenging me this week- it was productive, and I had a better idea of where things went wrong recently. Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? I didn’t ride, but Oats got to cruise around the indoor while we were talking and chill out. He also had a farrier appointment. Another busy day! So glad to have Monday off, phewww.

And that brings me to today- where I am trying to be more relaxed, present in my surroundings, and not taking myself, my health or my abilities, for granted.

Summer of high hopes

Weekend update, and as typical of my weekends- I did a LOT~ And really enjoyed myself for the most part.

Great day out with the girls!

Friday night was a quiet one in, I had a residual bitter-hangover from the week and it was freezing. I felt antisocial and kind of isolated. It was fine though, because I had a lot to look forward to- Saturday my in-laws came for a visit and we went for lunch after I was out riding  Oats. Oats was great, we had a lovely little ride (it was freezing out), and my lunch was good- mac’n’ cheese at The Bent Mast. It was a very chilly walk out though!

Later in the afternoon we had a bunch of errands to run (Old Navy, groceries, hardware store), and I invited a girlfriend over for wine in the evening. We caught up for hours! I missed her so much, I was really happy to share time with her. I truly love visiting with my buddies, and I feel so much happier when I can. 🙂

Wine until 11am sounds like a great idea, until…The alarm goes off at 7:30 am and we were up and out for our race at 9am. It was FREEZING. I felt horrible – not hungover at all, but just tired and frozen, and stiff.

Good food, good cider and great company.

My race recap is coming tomorrow, but let’s just say it was an extremely disappointing race.

But I did get the chance to see some more buddies at the race and they enjoyed their races, so whoop! Way to go! Afterwards I zipped home, showered at light speed, and put on my nicer clothes because we were off to Sea Cider for their annual Wassail party! I love it out there, it’s a great opportunity to try some ciders, sample some great snacks and just chill out and talk. I had a lovely time with my friends and time just flew by. The sample tix are $2/ea, and you can have 1 cider sample with 1 ticket, and many of the food varieties are 1/ea, some of the bigger options are 2/ea but I didn’t end up having those. So I had a great chance to try veggie curry, chicken curry, puff pastry with goat cheese X2, date-bread sticky pudding,  YUM!

We got back to the barn, and I changed clothes again and rode Oats. I realized I was very tired so our ride was quite short, but decent enough. Got home around 4-ish and was bone tired and chilled thoroughly. It was NOT warm out yesterday or the whole weekend.

That is about to change though- warming starting today! I already feel more hopeful. That being said, I hope this week doesn’t bash my good spirits into the ground…It might.

Horse show recap: Inaugural Cedar Vista hunter show!

So, the horse show season is upon us and I was kind of wondering what I was going to show in this year. In past years I have shown at the Appy shows (Vancouver Island Appaloosa Horse Club), and Westside Stables shows. There are also the higher-rated and higher-cost SSITS shows that I have NOT ventured out to yet- too much $$ and we’re not polished enough.

Photo courtesy of Lindsay F.

All in all, I was feeling pretty blah about the show season. Like, I want to show and feel confident out there but was bored by my options: Appy or Westside. Yawn…

Enter the new show season at Cedar Vista! Close-ish, new, with great footing and some really snazzy jumps. Offering a fairly reasonable series that would be brand-new to everyone. Sign me up!

Pats for a good boy. Photo courtesy of Lindsay F.

They had jumpers on Saturday and hunters on Sunday, we opted for hunters. Loaded good old Oats up and away we went!

I entered him in the 2’3” hunters and one 2’6” class, and the division included one equitation on the flat class. We warmed up in the ring and Oats was a tad looky, but overall very well behaved. The open schooling was set low, but we marched over everything–like a pro!

Then, we waited a little bit- entries were low- until my division. We were able to warm up over the new height and then start. I was feeling a strange combination of sort of nervous, but overall quite blasé at the same time. The jump heights were fine, but I wanted to get more nervous?

Then- in we go! Our first round was great, second was fine, and my eq was kind of terrible. Chip-city. UGH. Also we botched the right lead change to one line every.single.time. Ouch…

But in good news, Oats is getting his skip changes more consistently if you don’t count that one line, and my pace was pretty good, I didn’t feel too nervous! The wheels kind of fell off in my equitation…I got too ahead of myself, and anxious. Oh well. There was always the 2’6”… More warm-ups at this height (Oats and I did a LOT of jumping at this show). He was rolling so smoothly- it felt effortless. We called it quits and got ready to go in for good this time.

Yay! Good pony! Photo courtesy of Lindsay F.

And we chipped the first jump and I was SOoooo not straight. Gulp! I could hear my trainer yelling at me to calm down and breath! Right–got it! The second was better, and then the course just flowed from there…What a great way to end my rounds! Go Oats.

It was a lovely one to finish on, and the increased heights didn’t bother me in the slightest. It was just 1 flat class left- and we have historically either done really well (top 3) or horribly (crowhopping, bucking, rude, rushing, excused) in our flat classes.

Oats managed to keep his hair on and only had one goofy moment when a horse passed us- he started shaking his head, ready to crowhop at the canter. We even had a few small ‘tests’ from the judge- drop stirrups at the trot, posting trot w/o stirrups, and then pick them up again. AND sitting trot! I know, crazy eh?

Accepting ribbons. Photo courtesy of Lindsay F.

Second for us! Woop!!

Good job Cedar Vista- friendly people, niiiice prizes, good company, great footing and fancy jumps. What more can a girl ask for?! I will be back!