Is it June already???!!??

Goodness! So much has happened since Easter!!

Todd and I took a trip to Iowa the beginning of May to meet Brad's new girlfriend (Now fiancé.) Was great to see the kids, visit Jenny's grave, meet Rebecca and hug some of my favorite people!

I sold my prized, loved and cherished mare.  It was hard. I had a ton of people come to look, try her out, make me an offer and then I would cry and couldn't do it. Took me 6 months to be able to do it. She is 15 this year and doesn't have a shelf life. She went to an amazing home where she is loved by a retired woman who has all the time in the world  to camp and ride plus some dressage on the side. I can come and see her whenever I want. I have to be honest about the time I have and what is fair to my family and my horses. I always said (and I mean what I say) if my horses aren't used and ridden, they have to go to a home where they are. Every horse needs a job.  As far as kids go, Heidi will be in highschool next year and with working and running kids, my dreams are on hold once again. But, I never want my kids to say I wasn't there for them because I was chasing dreams and choosing horses over them. I never want to regret not spending valuable time with my sweet girls.

So Leila is now my new endurance partner. We won't be racing for a few years, she is still growing and in training. She is just 5. She is now going over bridges, through water over logs, and not spooky at all. Next week the girls and some friends and I are going  horse camping up near Cle Elum like we do every year. This is Leila's first time and this is all the fun playing we do for the makings of an endurance horse! Tomorrow we go up to the trainer to begin her finishing.  While we are there, Reagan will use the arena to practice barrel patterns for gaming day. That's her thing, she loves it!

So what have we been doing recently???!!! Fun stuff!!! The girls and their friends have season passes for wild waves in federal way, a water slide/ roller coaster park and every day its hot we are there!! These are the sweetest most well behaved girls, I love spending time with all of them!! Someone said I would hate teenagers but, they are so dang fun!!

This evening we had the whole youth at our house for game night. Pizza, cookies, games and prizes. I will be sad when I don't have a house full of happy kids, but for now I just enjoy all of it!!

I'll try to journal more, just been busy cleaning up and landscaping the front of our house, I'll take a picture when I am done, it's looking awesome. After camping I'll be sure to post progress on Leila. Oh! I also need to register her! I picked out her name. She is a witezII horse and Raffles, forward with brains!!! She is by my trainer's stallion Sir. So she will be Witez  Faithful Sirvent when I finally get to turning in her paper work.
She'll be my partner in training for Tevis. I think she will do it beautifully. As much as I adore Renata, silly mare  had a hard time rating herself and was a worrier and I had to keep ulcer guard in her for fear of getting ulcers! Leila takes things more in stride and honestly is smarter than all 3 of my horses put together.

Now I just need to bond with her, and those things take time.