Tag: #horseandrainydays

Weekly Coffee Share; December and Decorations!

On By dprastkaIn Family is important, Living life, weekend coffee share22 Comments
Weekend Coffee share is a time for us to take a break out of our busy lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)! Please grab a cup of coffee or tea and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? any weekend plans?

Welcome to my weekend coffee share. I just got back from the stables enjoying my time with my ponies on a sunny day until the rain clouds moved in and they just rolled right on in and no more sun! It is raining now this afternoon and 50% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday. Basically it will be raining for the whole weekend. Welcome December! Wow, we had a crazy wet year last year and I was hoping for a bit of a break this year. I know we always need the rain, but when you own horses it’s a love/hate relationship with any kind of weather! I forgot to ask, do you need a refill on your coffee? or are you drinking tea, maybe ice tea? I’m getting a refill to go with my cookie snack! CRAZY WEATHER!!

My hubby is such a sweetheart and put out a bunch of Christmas decoration. I always decorate the tree. So this is the before photo, and I need to get off my lazy butt and decorate the tree. Instead I am sitting here writing this coffee share! 😀
Earlier in the day I was here getting them out, exercised and groomed! 😀
I called Zack’s name and he looked at me while Chloe ignored me. I’m lucky their stalls are dry under their shelters!
Chloe is so sweet. I can’t help myself and say often, I just LOVE her winter coat color! She is so dark this year, pretty girl!

I won’t show a decorated tree in this post because I really want to share this now and it will take me too long to get the whole tree decorated. It will be motivating instead to get the tree decorated so I can write a new post about my decorations! I like that idea, so ya’ll will have to wait to see the finished tree. I know everyone has seen a million tree decorations but it sure helps put me in the Christmas spirit! And I shouldn’t be so lazy, but working night shift and taking care of ponies, one gets a little tuckered out and now I have to decorate a tree! Are you feeling sorry for me yet? Haha, I’m just kidding of course, I enjoy Christmas but I have so many decorations I just need to get motivated to decorate! I’m just going on and on about this, I’m the hugest procrastinator. LOL 😀

I just LOVE our collection of Christmas bears! This is only half of them. There is one snowman in the bunch. We bought one a year as the kids were growing up!

I am trying really hard to get into the spirit and thought I would share my bears. How do you decorate for Christmas? I won’t put everything out as I do not have enough room. I definitely have too many decorations, just stuff I have collected over the years. Usually we decorate Thanksgiving weekend but with my sister and daughter visiting I didn’t want to pull out the decorations. Visiting with them was a ton of fun, and I still have plenty of time to get it all done. I will end with one more photo of my day. She always makes me smile!

Miss Chloe is so beautiful! They bring such joy to my life these two ponies! ❤ ❤ ❤

Thank you for sharing coffee with me. My thoughts are rather all over the place, thinking of family, weather, work, Christmas, what to do for Christmas! It can sometimes be overwhelming during the holidays. I’m trying really hard to just take one day at a time. I made it through Thanksgiving weekend and I thought it all went GREAT. Now I want to buy some Christmas cards and then we will pick names for gifts this year. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Thank you for stopping by! 😀

Busy with the Holidays!

~Diana

Happy Valentines = Horses!

On By dprastkaIn Living life3 Comments
I tried another selfie, I like this one, my LOVE!

Happy Valentines Day! and yes, I am happily married and my husband knows that my horses are my LOVE. You have to be horse crazy, and even a bit obsessed to even come close to understanding that these beautiful animals are just my Valentine. How are you spending your Valentines day? My hubby and I are not big on celebrating this loving day, he let’s me indulge in my LOVES as you can see by my photos. To say I am obsessed is definitely an understatement. I hope you can enjoy my obsession with me as I share more photos!

I love them so much that I am always trying to find excuses to take their photo’s and so this is as good of an excuse as any, Happy Valentines day! Oh yes, I already said this, so give your honey a big giant kiss, either on the lips or on their nose! 😀 ❤

I tried to get an action shot, it’s okay, not easy to do!

I tried and took some action shots, not always easy but the more I look at the photo above the more I like it. I took more but liked this one with Chloe and her friend Gracie in the arena. It was a gloomy day as another storm is here and we made it out on trail before it started to rain in the afternoon. I like the colors in the photos when the sun is not out as you can see the cloudy sky as I try and enjoy all the weather we are having. We will eventually get a lot of sun so I can’t complain about this cool winter day!

Zack taking his turn looking handsome! I should have tried another selfie!

I can’t believe there is yet more storms coming with it raining all day tomorrow. I am thankful that it is drying out really fast in between storms and so I have stopped complaining about the rain and am loving the weather. Weather, I can’t believe that we are actually having “weather” in sunny Southern California where it seems the sun is always shining. It really is an anomaly, with very little rain each year it is like a 10 or 15 year thing where we get hit hard with rain like it has never rained before. I know we will survive. Haha, as the people in the north and northeast struggle with a horrible winter this year. I have NOTHING to complain about, how is it where you live? All I have to worry about is rain. I’ll stop complaining I promise!

Pretty Photo, pretty horses!
I don’t know why, but I love the back end of a horse!

I’ll close by saying that horse people, at least a lot of horse people I know LOVE horses rear ends. We like to see those beautiful tails, as I see Zack’s needs some whitening but we also like the big muscles of those large rear ends. I LOVE seeing how well developed they are, I don’t know, something about them that makes me want to hug them as I groom and brush out their beautiful long tails and pat them on the rear. ❤

I remember when I was young, I could run up on my horse Mirage and catapult myself up and over his butt like I jumped on a trampoline and hopped right up over his rear end and on his back! YUP, I did it, I am not making this up, I was so agile and could leap up high enough!! What memories of days gone by and I could not even begin to do that today! NO WAY! I am to old and lost my spring. I could not even swing up from the side which I could do easily back in the day……

I LOVE HER REAR END, LOOK AT THAT TAIL!!!

I hope you have a WONDERFUL VALENTINE’S DAY! Loving me some ponies!

Love to my HUBBY too! ❤ ❤ ❤

-Diana

Rain Update and Horses!

On By dprastkaIn Barn stories, Horse stories, Living life11 Comments
She’s busy eating, I LOVE her dabbles as she sheds her winter coat!

It has rained and rained and rained some more. I have not seen this much rain in years. It was so incredibly wet and muddy and rained so much I could not turn out the horses today. So I just groomed them in their stall and gave them their lunch. I am very thankful that my ponies stall under the shelter has stayed dry, I feel very fortunate. We buy our own shavings so I do what I can to help keep them high and dry!

She is busy eating some lunch. At least she is dry under her shelter. ❤
A photo from above as I held the camera over the top of the fence! She’s so cute! 

Chloe does not grow a very long winter coat. She is shedding as Spring approaches and I love her dapples. Zack has been standing in the rain off and on as the days go and since he has gotten limited turn outs, and not wanting to roll in the saturated mud he is actually really clean. I have enough shavings in the stall that if they sleep they don’t get dirty as it’s just very wet shavings. As I brushed him today, he was so very soft. It looked like he got a bath, it’s a rain water bath! I just had to take some photos as he is so white. He won’t stay that way as it slowly dries, he will eventually roll in the wet sand in the arena and get pretty dirty brown. Once it dries, it does brush off thankfully!

AMAZING he is so clean in this wet muddy weather! He’s very soft too!
Such a character as I reached over the fence to take this photo of Zack! Silly boy!

The clouds have parted, the rain has stopped this afternoon after 5 days of rain. Its nice to see the sun shining as I gaze out the window as I write this blog. We all miss riding at the barn. We are not use to ALL THIS RAIN! I know we need rain, it just makes life at the stables a bit of a challenge. I know there are tons of incredibly flooded stables, unless you have an indoor arena it will take some days to dry out. Today was the last day of rain until maybe next week and I am not going to miss it as we all need a break in Southern Cali!

Water logged, horse owner, rain go away until another day!

-Diana

Too Much Rain for Horses!

On By dprastkaIn Barn stories, Horse stories, Living life4 Comments
My Chloe girl LOVES water! 

My goodness, we haven’t seen this much rain in over a year. I think it was two years ago we had a really wet winter but what is bad about all the rain we are getting here in Southern California is the amount all at once. We are completely saturated and the ground just can’t take any more water. We are fighting with mother nature as we want to have our ponies have a dry spot to eat and sleep. We buy loads of shavings to help dry the stall but we are slowly losing this battle. 😦

As sad as I feel, the rain feels good. It feels cleansing and the air fresh and crisp. I know I should not complain because I know that all this deluge of rain can cause mud slides in mud slide prone areas that are prone to slides because of the bad fires that happened last year. So as much as I would like to complain, I know the sun will shine and things will eventually dry out. For now it’s slogging through the mud to try and get to our stalls and I’m thankful that my horses do not go nuts and can be turned out into our saturated arena. No riding until we see some sun. We have had rain for 5 days straight, something rather unusual for our sunny not so rainy area!

We have a lake in our arena, you can see the water running, we are saturated!
I do not try, but I now have a photo with Zack’s tongue out, Yay! I LOVE IT!

My girlfriend Nancy and I were at the stables today trying to help our horses with a tiny bit of exercise and to put a little bit more shavings under the shelters so they have a dry place to stand and eat and sleep if they so choose. My horses lay down in the wet shavings, can’t control that but it will all dry out hopefully by next week. We will buy more shavings to help the stalls dry out faster!!

He is so silly! This is his way of begging. Yes, for a treat! He did not get one because I did not have one in my pocket. 

I wanted to write about the aggravation of too much WATER! I love the rain, I really do, but I wish mother nature would rain in a more rationed way. Haha, like we can ask anything from mother nature. I guess that is where the old saying comes from “when it rains, it pours!” Because it has been raining, and pouring, then raining some more. It is definitely what we call here where I live a VERY WET WINTER! I know the snow lovers will love all the snow our local mountains are now getting. I lived in the local mountains for one year, that was enough for me. I did not have horses then, I do not miss the snow. I am not a winter snow person, that I know for sure.

How is your winter evolving? I have been getting really wet and funny thing I do not have the correct attire to be out in the rain. I do not own rubber boots, something I wish I had today. I do not have a water proof jacket, something that would be very helpful this week. And I do not have a water proof hat, but my hat kept the rain from getting my glasses all wet. I guess I may need to purchase some rain gear, even though this may be all over with soon and I may not see this much rain again in what, 2 years? We will see.

Water logged in California,

-Diana ❤