Lots of Awesomeness!!!!

Spyke is AWESOME!!!!! AWESOME I tell you!!!

We are having such a nice time (Touch wood that it continues). On my birthday I deceided to treat myself to a show hunter lesson with Tracey Page. The lesson was AMAZING. It was like everything I had been told about my position suddenly clicked in my head. Helped a lot by the fact that every time I got my position right Spyke really, really responded. It was totally awesome. There was also a fair amount of tanking and bucking but Tracey worked me through it.

I had the lesson on the Thursday and I was entered for my first show hunter on the Sunday, what a perfect move it was to have the lesson just before the competition. Spyke was superb on the day. His practice round was pretty rough, threw in a stop at one and then 'discussed' every jump after that but once he had that out of his system he was great.

We did 3 rounds (over teeny heights but they still looked big to me) and got a third in the first class and second in the second!!!!! I was stoked. (And more than a little stunned as they were quite big classes). Spyke's rounds though were SO kind and my 'new' position helped everything. I am still buzzing more than a week later.

Then on Saturday just been, we did a SH clinic with Tracey again through the Waitemata Riding Club. It was such fun and Tracey was stoked at the improvement in Spyke and I even in just a week. :-) At the end of our lesson she made Spyke and I jump last so that she could put the jumps up. We flew over them at 90. I am so excited by how our jumping is going that I am boring everyone around me to tears but I don't care LOL 'cos I am buzz buzz buzzing!!!!!!

The Lesson

The Competition

The Clinic

I'm back!!!

It has been a while!!! Things have been very quiet recently which is a really good thing in so many ways!!!! Brina has been quite well. She had a few siezures over Christmas, sometimes two in one day so she is now on Phenobarbitone and it seems to have made a HUGE difference to her. She has had NO siezures, NO reaction to the drugs and her vomitting has almost stopped. I am SO pleased!!!

Sammie is great, she gets a bit creaky some days and little bit absent minded but she is looking great.

Tai is FANTASTIC. I must find a pic of him (or take a pic) as he is just a happy wee soul. :-)

Spyke is also fantastic. We had a wee change in circumstances with the horses. The grazing at Kristina's became a little tenuous as the owners sold off a block and then started talking about putting the rest on the market so Kristina and Ben have moved to a FABULOUS place in Waimauku. While all the uncertainty was happening my friend Candice found a block to lease and asked if I would like to move the boys on. It was perfect timing and is just fabulous grazing!!!! There is a concrete tie up, with a hose (the small things count!!!), there is a huge tack room and a big flat paddock that is perfect for riding!!!! The land doesn't seem to get muddy which will be fantastic for Tai this winter. The boys are in a little herd consisting of Tai (The Boss), Spyke (The Boss' flunky), Ed (Candice's lovely boy) and Biscuit (Bottom of the pecking order). They are soooo good together!!!!

The major upside of the move is that I am able to school and jump again. I hadn't realised how much I missed that but both Spyke and I are LOVING getting back into it and we have our first show hunter comp for well over a year next Sunday. Yay!!!! I have also booked Thursday off as I am going to have a lesson with Tracey Page to get us back into the swing of it before the comp. I am SO excited about getting back into everything.

I have also been riding Biscuit which is just a BLAST. Today we did our first little jumps and she was sooooooo sweet.

I have also been able to do a bit of baking. New recipes include ginger kisses (YUM) and marshmallow easter eggs (even YUMMER!!!!)

That is all my news (off the top of my head anyway) for today. Hopefully I will be a bit more regular with my reports now that I have more fun things to report on. :-)

Oh yeah, and I have lost 13kg since I last posted. :-)

Tai January 2012

Easter goodies

Tai and Spyke checking out the new digs!!!

Pics and more

Spyke's 'broken' foot

Tai looking way better than he did.

Silly me!!!!! I was looking for a couple of pics to upload and as I was looking through my photos I realised that I DO have things to talk about!!

The Rugby World Cup

Currently the RWC is in full swing over here. This weekend is the quarter finals and up until now it has been just great. The atmosphere is buzzing and people are just having a lovely time. :-)

I took the opportunity to go to the opening celebrations at the waterfront here in Auckland, as did 199,999 other people!!!! It was MAYHEM!!!! I ended up spending about an hour and a half sitting outside the railway station waiting for Tina who was catching the train in (I had brought the car in that morning and managed to park it not far from the waterfront). It was really interesting sitting there watching all the people wandering past.

Once Tina and her friend had arrived we headed down Quay St towards the viaduct where the big screens were. This was NOT a good plan as the other 199,999 other people seemed to have the same plan. We ended up in a massive crowd where you just couldn't move unless everyone moved and it actually got quite scary. We did however eventually manage to extricate ourselves from the throng and were more sensible in our route choices after that. We ended up sitting over the Wynyard Quarter (a new addition to the Viaduct) where we were able to watch the opening ceremony on a big screen and we had a FANTASTIC view of the fireworks. It was amazing!!!!!! We stayed for the start of the NZ Tonga game (had to see the hakas) and then shot home to watch the game on my new, fab-u-lous 42 inch LCD tv. :-) It was a really neat evening and would have to be the best fireworks I have ever seen in NZ.

Trip to New Plymouth

I also had a whistlestop trip to New Plymouth with Tracy. She was over from Melbourne so we grabbed the opportunity to go down and see the latest Estcarp litter. We shot down on the Saturday afternoon, dropped in to the motel, popped in to Pukekura Park to see the lights (they are on for the RWC), caught up with a bunch of people for dinner and watched the end of the Australia Ireland game which Ireland won!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!

On Sunday we headed to Midhirst to huggle puppies before racing back up to Auckland.

September 2011

It has been a while (as always) since my last post. I COMPLETELY blame Facebook for that!!! I also don't have a huge amount to talk about. It has been a long, hard winter. It was very wet and very, very muddy.

Spyke has come out of the winter with very soft feet. This has resulted in LOTS of abscesses and to add insult to injury, just as I was getting him back into work and he was going BEAUTIFULLY he did a big yahoo in the paddock and manged to stomp on something really hard and has damaged the sole of his foot. :-( So he has been bandaged for the last two weeks. I am hoping to ride him today (fingers crossed) but I think that I will only be able to road ride for a few weeks which is just a REALLY disappointing statr to my season. We have already missed two competitions that I would have like to have taken him to and I suspect we will miss a few more. :-(

Spyke a few hours before hurting his foot. 

Tai is a box of fluffy ducks. He too had a hard winter though and at one point he dropped SO much weight SO suddenly that I thought I would lose him but after shovelling LOTS of feed into him he is now doing well again and is happy and bouncy. :-)

The dogs are well. Brina (touch wood) has done nothing terrible recently and is well , happy and bouncy. Sammie had her 'beauty sopt' removed this week and is looking fabulous. :-) Actually, it is a bit swollen so she looks like she has collagen implants but it seems to be healing nicely and she too is healthy and happy. She does have a degenerative spine thing though which means that occasionally she will move in a way that hurts but we are managing that.

Other than that I am delighted to say that there are no dramas, long may that continue!!!!!!

Tai at the end of winter. Note: this is him looking better!!!!!

Apologiews for the pictures being all over the place. I just couldn't seem to move them around successfully today.

Addendum

On a not so good note poor Christchurch has had a hell of day!!!

I was chatting with my friend Wendy on Instant Messenger and giving her a bit of a hard time for not even noticing a 4.3 earthquake when suddenly typed (badly) 'Huge one' I wasn't sure what she meant but then I realised that there was a huge earthquake hitting. She swore but kept typing, telling me what was happening. It seemed to go on for a LONG time but eventually it stopped and when it came up on the seismic drums it turned out to be a 5.5 - NOT small!!!!

A short time later there was a 4.4 and I was feeling REALLY sorry for Christchurch. Suddenly Wendy swore on the IM, said that it was a REALLY big one, that it felt like the house could come down and that she was off. Watching that one appear on the drums was just awful, it took me back to Feb 22, you could just tell it was big. Sure enough it was 6.0.Andrew felt it in Hawkes Bay!!!!

 No-one was killed, a few people were injured and some more buildings fell down but I think the mental strain is starting to show, people are fiunding it harder and harder to cope with the ongoing fear and uncertainty. I so feel for Chch.

The drums this afternoon:

June Post Plus 1

Taranaki was fab-ewe-luss!!!! I do love it down there.

I was very late leaving for Taranaki as the boys were booked to have their toenails trimmed at 10 on Saturday morning. When I got up to the paddock I called the boys, Tai looked up but I couldn't see Spyke. I walked down the paddock a bit and could see Spykie between the sheds so I called him and he called back. I thought that was very sweet but a little unusual as he would normally wander up so I figured something wasn't quite right. Sure enough the silly boy had wandered between two fences that eventually came together so it was too narrow for him to turn around. There was a tree right behind him so if he went to back out (if he even thought of that....I suspect not) it would tap him on the bum. There about 5 piles around him so he must have been there for a while, bless him. Once I got a halter on him I backed him out and he was sweet!!! However he ended up not getting his toenails done as the farrier is going away shortly and by leaving him a week he can get 2 seven week trims instead of a 6 and an 8.

So I didn't get on the road till after one but what a GREAT time to travel to New Plymouth!!!! There was almost no traffic!!! It was great!!! It was bucketing with rain when I left Auckland but it cleared up once I got over the Bombays. However as I was approaching Pirongia I saw this:

Hmmmmm I thought, methinks it's going to rain. And rain it DID!!!! I was driving along a straight and halfway along I could see a wall of water ahead of me. On went the winscreen wipers and down came the deluge. It was amazing. It was like someone opened a monsoon bucket above the car. I almost had to stop.!!!

The rest of the drive was mostly uneventful. I was on top of the world to be out on that road again. The only downer was that as I was heading out of New Plymouth there was an elderly man that had been knocked over and was lying on the road waiting for an ambulance, it made me cry. :-( However I checked the local paper today and there was no mention of it so hopefully that means he was fine.

I stayed with Barbera and Steve in Midhirst. It's so lovely there, out in the country with LOADS of berners. We had indian takeaway for dinner and Steve's yummy home made cookies for dessert and I have to say that Steve makes the BEST coffee!!!!! We watched a couple of movies while the rain poured down and then went to bed. There was a fabulous thunder storm rumbling away in the distance and it was great to lie there and listen to it.

In the morning we awoke to this:

How stunning is that?????? I LOVE Taranaki!!!!

I had a LOVELY day, with some sad bits. One of Barbera and Steve's dogs (Webster, who is Meggie's dad) was in hospital as he had suddenly lost the use of his back legs. He can still just feel someone squeezing his toes and can pee and poop so I am keeping EVERYTHING crossed that he has just twinged something and will come right. It is not looking promising though and it was heartbreaking to see him there, completely happy but dragging his back end. Please, anyone who reads this, have a quiet jingle for Webby tht he makes it through this as he is only 6 and it is just not his time. :-(

We went to visit Webby in hospital but, being a Sunday, everything was locked up so Barb left a message with the vets to see if we could make a time and we took the 'kids' for a walk along one of the new parts of the coastal walkway.

Fabulous bridge. :-)

After our walk we had lunch at Zanziba (along with the committee meeting, nuff said on that), then we shot over to see Web, which, as I said, was just heartbreaking!!!!! After giving him HUGE hugs and talking to the vet we went to East End to have a walk with all the berners.

We walked along the beach and the girls had a wonderful time.

It was a lovely  walk and we met lots of lovely people. :-)

I had to race away after the walk as it was after 3 and I wanted to get the worst of the drive (Mt Messenger and Awakino) over and done with before dark. The roads were great again, almost no traffic but just before Mokau I came over the brow of a hill to see this:

I thought there must have been a bad crash as that is almost the only thing that will bring a road to a complete stop. There were people out of their cars and wandering around so they had clearly been stopped for quite a while. Before long behind me was this:

I was very lucky though as only about 15 minutes after I arrived people were getting back in their cars and we started to move. Around the corner, the reason for the hold up became VERY clear.

A whooooole lot of cliff had come down. They were only letting cars go through one at a time and between each car they would look nervously up at the cliff and then hurry us through. I don't think anyone was hurt though so everyone was just held up for a bit.

Ther rest of the journey was uneventful and I arrived back home at about 8.

It was such a lovely couple of days and I can finish up with my favourite photo from the weekend.

Me and my girls. :-)

June Post

We are into winter officially now.... it is still really warm though. Apparently temperatures are about 6 degrees above normal. Having said that it has bucketed with rain on a few occasions (one of those occasions being today). So our days are now very short. I am leaving for work (and arriving at work) in the dark and it is starting to get dark when I get home at night. It is the one thing I really find difficult about winter is the lack of sunlight ...... and the mud!!!

I have just had a weekend out of Auckland which was FAB. The girls and I went to stay with my friend Kerri and her lovely dog Walter. It was great as the girls are very relaxed around Walt and had a nice restful weekend. I drove down on the Saturday, it was one of those really, really wet days. I got there just about dinner time and had a glass of wine in my hand before I could blink. :-) Unfortunately quite a lot more glasses of wine followed. I think we were so busy talking we didn't realise how much we were drinking (that's my excuse and I am sticking to it ;-).

So we both were feeling a tad seedy the next morning and it took us a fair while to get moving. Kerri is selling her house though and there were people coming through to look at the place so that got us up and about. We took the dogs for a walk along the beach. The tide was really high and there was very little beach to walk on and the sea was really stormy. My poor girls have to put up with my complete paranoia and were not allowed to go in too deep in case they get into trouble.

 Brina looking MAGNIFICENT

 Walt giving special kisses.

 The girls swimming

 Papamoa Beach

 Sammie looking gorgeous

A monarch!!! In June!!!!

After our walk we went for brunch in Papamoa. It was blinkin' HOT for June - 23 degrees!!!! The girls tucked themselves under the tiny table to take advantage of the shade and they were much admired. :-)

Sunday evening we had NO wine but ate lots of nibbley things and watched a DVD. Monday was a public holiday so out we went for brunch again into Mt Maunganui. It was very tasty.   The girls and I had to head off pretty much straight after brunch as we wanted to miss the worst of the 'going back to Auckland' traffic. As it was there was still a whole heap of traffic even that early. It was a lovely weekend.

Tomorrow I am heading off down to Taranaki for a committee meeting. It the BMD Club. I could have attended by phone by I felt it was a great opportunity for me to get some Taranaki air back into my lungs. I am finding that I am very homesick for Taranaki at the moment and I hope that a trip down will ease that a bit (although I suspect that it will actually make it worse.)