Ice Ice Baby!

I can't believe I skipped the entire month of February! I suppose I was too busy celebrating my birthday. I got to go on an awesome trip to Niagara Falls - it was quick, but really, there's not much to do there short of looking at the falls. I'm definitely not into all the kitchy entertainment offered. My kids were dying to do all the crazy stuff, of course, but we kept pretty much to my idea of fun. And really, how much fun can a 40 year old be? Anyone for Denny's?????

The frozen-ness of everything was incredible! I'm from the deep south so we really don't get to see snow like what we experienced. I'm grateful that there was no snow falling from the sky while we were there, we got to see PLENTY of it piled all around us and floating atop the Great Lakes and the Niagara River. There was about 10 or more feet of ice floating on top of the river just under Niagara Falls, everything around the falls was caked with ice and the portholes behind the falls were completely frozen shut. We still paid to take the Journey Behind the Falls (at a much reduced rate because of the frozen portholes) which allowed us to go down and peek out near the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls. It was pretty cool.

What the heck?? I think it's a Boy!

I chose to take my kids on this trip, something we would not normally do during the school year. We took them out of school because I wanted them to be with me to celebrate - I hope it will be a great memory for all of us. I know that I am so grateful that I was able to take the quick trip and enjoy my celebration with the people I love the most!

Back to reality. We recently purchased two horses! The horses are residing at their regular barn until we can get some fencing done around here. We've had horses here before (20 years ago!) and things have become run down, broken, rusted, etc. from non use. There are several trees in the woods that have fallen across areas of the fencing that need mending and we've got tons of new fence to add. We took down a lot of the old fence over the years! Gah!



So here are my new kids - Magic and Hazanny. Magic is a Quarter Horse and Annie is an Arabian. They are sweet as can be and I think will be a lot of fun for my girls (and ME!). I'm totally a horse girl and I have missed my horses soooooooo much. I'm so excited to have this new opportunity. Of course, I am married to a city boy who has barely even touched a horse so I'm on my own with this adventure. Hunk is happy to pay for the stuff, but he's not so keen on the involvement of it all.

Today was probably one of the worst days ever, it's not life threatening or anything, but got totally blindsided by life altering news. I needed some time to pound things out today, so I spent a majority of my day in our old barn. I haven't been down to the barn much at all in the past 20 years since the other horses left. The barn is a good 300ft. away from our house, so it's kinda out there. It has become a catch all storage unit for my dad's tools - in fact, he converted the stalls to a workshop, which means we need new stalls (blergh). We've got various yard appliances parked there and who knows what else. The barn needs a lot of attention with the impending arrival of my new girls so I decided to get started today. I forgot how much I love being in the barn, it's big and airy and it still smells like hay. It was very good therapy for me today, that's for sure. I also unloaded a trailer full of fencing wood - it was heavy and very labor intensive, but I got to throw stuff around, make a lot of noise and just get some of this crap out. I feel better, but damn, this just sucks.