Remodel

Craig and I have been remodeling our bathroom for the last week, which translates into: "the Mayfields are being total lunatics and tearing the hell out of one of the most important rooms in their house". We have no other bathroom, this is it. So we are stuck trying to hurry as fast as we can to get it done. We've gone more than a week without a shower, and both of us are starting to get really tired and cranky of washing our hair and other bodily parts in the kitchen sink...

Remodeling a room in a house is always time consuming and most often times full of surprises, especially when you have an old house - like ours. This was supposed to be a somewhat "simple" type of project for us after we got our feet wet with a major remodeling of our kitchen two years ago. Bathroom, not a problem. Well, yeah.... right. We were kindly introduced to some dry rot foundation issues when we removed the tub. Surprise!

Luckily both Craig and I are not afraid of a challenge and have fixed most of the problem. After sawing a huge hole in the bathroom floor, we got underneath the house and cut out part of the seal board next to the concrete stem wall. (We had to jack the floor boards up off of the house to do this), and have eliminated our foundation rot issues in that area. Now we just have to fix the rot problem that's underneath the window and replace the 2 x 4's in the wall. We're buttoning it up slowly but surely.

Our tub used to be where the hole in the floor is in the photo - hence where the dry rot issues were. We had one of those old dual purpose "shower/tub" types of setups in there, basically stand in the tub while you take a shower. I regret not snapping a picture of the room before we started remodeling it. It will look totally different (and much bigger) when it's finally done. The sink will not be there either - but I will get more into that in another post.

A view of the new wall that we're building to make the room bigger. Also, our new tub and shower base are shown in the photo as well. They will be separate entities this time around! Yay!

I'm not sure if anybody can read my chicken-scratch plans, but it's a layout for what will happen. We are moving walls, covering doors, ripping up floors, and other assorted mayhem on this project...

Western Dressage

Today Octopelle and I tried western dressage for the first time, and it was a blast! Tony Jackson gave a clinic at the CREC arena in Irrigon and I went to see if my horse and I would like it. (Never hurts to try something new.) I had been considering attempting a western dressage course for a few months, but hadn't found any events that were close enough to home that also offered a "beginners class" for people who just want to try it. (I damned sure didn't want to show up at an official dressage show and make a complete fool of myself - so this clinic was a PERFECT opportunity to see if we would like to do this or not.)

Octopelle seemed to take to "cowboy" dressage like a fish takes to water. He loved it, and we recieved some good lessons and instruction from Tony before attempting to do our test. After all of the group participants in the clinic got a private lesson, we each got to try an actual test depending on our horses skill levels. Ox and I did the Introductory Level Test I, which was all three gaits in a fairly simple pattern: walk, working trot, and canter. I have to admit that we need just a tiny bit more work going "deep into the corners", but everything else was great. Our collection and circles were really very good.

Tony has said that there will most likely be more of these little clinics in the future, and I'm really excited to hear that. I'd love to do more of it!

Tony Jackson instructing a rider in a class, above. Tony is an accredited dressage competitor, instructor, and judge. He has traveled the world with the Royal Lippizaner Stallions show for several years. He's a really fun guy and an excellent teacher!

Mary and her quarter horse gelding "Bugs". (Mary and Bugs were one of our main rivals at the Earn Your Spurs show series in Kennewick, along with Albert Ellis and his mare "Glory".)

It was a very fun day!

Jubilee Ranch Ride

On the 5th we headed to Prescott WA. to the Jubilee Ranch endurance ride. It was absolutely gorgeous weather! Sunny and a nice mild temperature. This ride was so awesome because it was very close to home, barefoot friendly trails, and the loops went through an apple orchard. (The apples were totally wonderful - I spent most of the time stuffing my face with sweet delicious apple snacks while Tommy blasted through the trees at a high trot.) Really fun stuff!


Jessica Andersen photo.  The snake river is in the background.



The bay "giraffe" looking at riders coming down from the hill.  He got a chance to cut loose and go pretty fast at this ride, and it was a nice vacation for him from doing slow western pleasure work in the arena. 



A *very cute* Eberl arabian foal resin "Pearl" recently completed in the studio to a deep dark chocolate baby bay.  She has some subtle "baby fuzz" highlights to her coat and is done in one of my all-time favorite colors! Such a cute foal sculpture.  Owned by Carole Ingram.

Frustrated, embarrassed, disappointed, and fed-up. This is how I feel at the moment. I had a long written out explaination of why I was feeling this way about certain events, but I'll do everybody a favor and not go through with posting it.

Eddie MacMurdo Show 2013

And a couple of pictures of the sunday afternoon thunderstorm.  Luckily it hit at about 4:30 p.m. just as the show was getting ready to wrap up.  Tommy and I were waiting to go into our last class and the skies opened up in a torrential downpour.  There was some very loud thunder and lightning that scared the crap out of some people's horses.  A few competitors decided to scratch some of the last classes and go home, and more than one person had to get off of a nervous jumpy horse due to the thunder and lightning crashing down. 

(And I was rather proud of Tommy, because he could've cared less about the noise.  He cocked a hind leg and almost went to sleep throughout the whole thing. We have neighbors who target practice on a regular basis, so our horses are kind-of brain dead to loud noises.)

These are a couple of pictures that Craig snapped as we sat underneath the covered warmup arenas.  It's hard to see in the photo above, but there is a small river running down the paved driveway.

Everybody ran for cover and waited for the storm to blow over.  There was a person that was going to load their horse into their trailer to go home, but they opted to wait inside the barn for the rain to go away instead...

Eddie MacMurdo Show 2013

Along with seeing my old friend Sibbea again, I got to meet a couple of new friends and see some old acquintances as well.  Tommy was in a stall across from Travis Locke and the Trafalgar Morgan crew from Walla Walla.  Travis was a really nice guy and I got to watch him hitch up his lovely morgan for the driving classes.  The morgan folks are always entertaining to watch at this show.  They put on their best suits and ties and their park horses are absolutely amazing sights to behold!  I'm always impressed with their turnouts.... 

Oh, and speaking of which - remember when I said that I could only handle one horse at this show?  The Trafalgar crew brought NINE morgans to compete!  There was a crew of half a dozen people getting horses cleaned up and ready to go into the showring through both days.

Along with the real horse people, I also encountered a model horse person at the show as well. Amy Widman was there taking some pictures and enjoying the day. I didn't recognize her at first, but then after she introduced herself I remembered her from when I used to show models. It was good to see her again! (And Amy, congrats on your engagement ring!)

We managed to bring home a couple of ribbons and beverage ware at this show. This years awards for us weren't nearly as lucerative as last years show - but that's just the luck of the draw when you go to events. Last year there were two light breed judges that clearly liked the diversity in the classes and placed a variety of horses quite highly.

This year was completely different. The judges made it quite obvious that they were madly in love with stock horses. None of the light breeds did very well. There were a couple of arabs in the evening western pleasure classes that I thought should have placed much higher than what they did. A lot of the same "stuck-in-first-gear peanut rollers" kept winning over and over again. I was a little bit disappointed, but maybe next year will have some light breed judges come back again.