Coffee Break

This is what an 8am Tuesday lesson looks like.....

1 Gray Mare, 1 Bay Gelding, 1 Trainer, 3 Coffees

Strides & Tides: Pro Day

For Ellie's last two shows I had been able to see her go on both Pro days- Wed & Thurs. For Sonoma Strides & Tides I was only able to make it out for day 2. I had heard that Ellie had been a good girl but the competition was stiff. For some reason Sonoma wasn't running the Baby Green Division but instead had a 2'6" Open- which meant she had some former Derby horses, some current Derby horses, and just generally nice finished horses in her division. Naturally I was totally miffed about until she got 5th out of 19th in one of her classes.  

OMG- yes- I am very aware that I am the overzealous Mom standing on the sidelines shouting asking why there are Varsity players in the JV league. 

I think she's just about ready for Pre Greens! 

Landmark Equestrian

So much has happened this past month and I am getting sidetracked by technology while trying to knock the blog rust off (e.g. just spent the past hour trying to renew a domain name, fix my google analytics, and organize photos in Elements 10.....did not succeed in any of the above). 

In the past 30 days:

- Westhaven team gave notice at our current boarding facility to move to a new spot a few streets down

- Horse Show @ Sonoma Strides and Tides

- Ellie and I made the difficult decision to stay behind at Fairmont under the banner, Landmark Equestrian, Ali's new business venture

I love our facility, the small but mighty group of clients, and that Ellie's training program isn't disrupted. There will be some changes to the schedule that will hopefully help to accommodate my weekday rides a little more. So overall, very few changes for us- just opportunity to continue to move up and grow!

3'3" for 33

I thought it might be a great idea to celebrate my 33rd birthday last Friday with some jumping- 3'3" to be specific. Better safe than sorry (given that we've only pushed that 3ft+ envelope once before)- bring on the grid!

Birthday Week

It's my birthday week (tomorrow is the official day) and since I'm obviously taking a vacation day to celebrate, my awesome coworkers surprised me with flowers and a cake! And Doughnuts. And Chipotle. I am going to need a forklift to get out of here!