Took the first "official" ride on Ira today.  Wished that I could say it was uneventful, but it was a fairly froggy trip around the round pen.  I didn't come off, and he eventually did relax after a good amount of  reassurance.  I know what we're going to have to work a bit more on now, so this first experience was a good test.    

Have I mentioned how much I love my horse?  Well..... I most definitely adore him.  "Mr. Awesome-Sauce" is amazing.

My mom and I seen this lovely fellow out on our ride today.  =:)  He was very brave and didn't fly away when we passed by.

Okay, so this is my very first "attempt" at making some jewelry.  I'll keep this one for myself, because there are so many ungodly horrible mistakes in it.  It's my first fledgling venture at doing this, so I certainly can't expect perfection right out of the gate.  The skull marks and sand buffing will improve with time.  It's a starting point.  

Pac North Oregon 100

Some photos from our ride last weekend in Brothers, OR. Nettie did great! I was so happy with her!

She had a lot of "forward" at the start, so I held her back for the first 10-15 miles so she wouldn't wear herself out at 30-40 miles.  After that, it was smooth sailing all the way to the finish line for the rest of our ride.  Photo courtesy of Chelly Bouferrache of Trail Song Photography.   

A photo of our last loop, still chugging along great!  Photo courtesy of Chelly Bouferrache of Trail Song Photography.

Chowing down on her mash after the ride.  She's such a sweetie.  So proud of my little yellow broomtail!

Shake N Bake dressed out at a whopping 279 pounds - hanging weight! Live weight was somewhere around 370-80 pounds. She was a big one. We fed her REALLY well!

Angry Birds!

Well, I wasn't expecting a surprise like this in our little backyard hummer paradise.... the plot has officially thickened! 


Now there are TWO male hummingbirds squabbling over the nectar feeder.  There's a tiny new male "outsider" that showed up this afternoon, and he's trying to muscle in on the resident males territory.  They had an epic skirmish at the feeder, and I was thrilled to have a front row seat for this tiny little micro event.  For me, it was even better than an MMA fight.  The two little farts were very quick to throw-down.  They started buzzing and dive-bombing each other fiercely, and there was some tiny little angry trash-talking chirps, and basically they got right up in each others faces to lay the smack down.  It lasted a grand total of about a minute and a half.  I wanted to make popcorn and grab a chair, but I thought I'd miss the whole damn thing if I even blinked the wrong way for a split second.....

The challengers.

The stare-down, followed by some brief trash-talk on who's feeder it actually belonged to.

Mid-skirmish.  They're both in this picture, but it was so quick the camera could only capture one of them.

The 10th round was still undecided.... 

But then there was a winner.  I have no idea if it's the original male that was here first, or if this is the challenger.