What a great lllooonnnggg holiday weekend.

I took Wednesday off to get house cleaning done as my parents and Amanda's boyfriend Andy were coming over for Thanksgiving. The house wasn't bad, but there were things that had to be done before I wanted to cook a Thanksgiving feast and have company over on Thursday. And I did get quite a bit done.

Andy came over this day also as I have never met him. It was time to get it over with. He seems nice enough, but don't they all at first. He helped me load the car to take some items to Good Will. I treated us to lunch. He went to Cowboy Junction with us as Amanda and I shopped for candles. And went to the barn with us while I turned out horses. I bomb barded him with questions. I even threw a trick question in and he failed that one. But what can I do but pray I raised my daughter right. David treated to our usual pre-Thanksgiving dinner, pizza and at 11pm I had to shoo the boy home.

Thanksgiving came and went very well. We had the usual spread of food. All the Thanksgiving norms. Turkey, stuffing, cranberries, gravy, etc... We watched the movie Angels and Demons as Dad and Andy had never seen it. Took pictures and just hung out. Mom and dad left about 3 o'clock or so and once again, I shooed Andy home at about 6pm. Amanda then went to Taylor's house and hung out and played games until about 10:30pm. So it was a nice day.

Friday came and David, June, Tracey, Amanda and I went and bought hay from our usual hay guy. Plus David did some other "heavy" chores that us chicks didn't need to be doing around the barn. (Yes, I am very blessed to be married to a non-horse guy that doesn't mind doing horse chores).

Anywho, I wasn't sure if I was going sorting or not. But decided I would. We didn't go the previous Friday and I don't like missing to much practice. And I was glad we went. However, practice was a bit different. Instead of 11 head, they were only running 8 head. I guess they couldn't get all the calves out of the pasture so we had to make due with what we had. I did my first run with a guy named Jimmy. We got all our calves in right at 60 seconds. But remember, we were only running 8 head. How would we have done with all 11? Anyway, the rest of the evening, I ran with Robin. It was bust after bust. I still don't understand why we don't do well together. Our second to last run, we got 4 and our last run of the evening together, we did get 6. After that she was a little beat, and wanted to stop. I was already in line and wanted to do one more with this young girl named Kim. She is 12 but looks like she is 15 or so. Anyway, we got all our calves and had several seconds to spare. I was really proud of that run. She is a beginner and was taking direction real well when I was communicating with her. We were just peeling our calves off the wall and working great as a team. So after that run, I called it a night and put Summer on the trailer and went back in to watch the jackpot. There were no novice teams running, just Pro/Am. During practice however, Retty, the announcer, asked if I was running jackpot and I told her no, and she called me chicken so everyone could hear her. LOL Just don't think I am ready to run with the big dogs yet. I am still just a pup in this sport. LOL

On Saturday, Tracey and I headed to Six-0 Ranch in Cleburne. We made plans with Kim W., Toni J., her beau Kelly and Alice Y. Kim invited a co-worked named Katie who invited another friend named Judy. Alice invited Karen H. and in the end, we had nine folks all together. It is hard riding in a large crowd on single track trails if some horses walk faster than others. But at Six-0 there really aren't that many single track trails. There are plenty of trails where you can spread out. That is what I like about that place. Plus, we did inadvertently break up into groups. Kim, Karen and I way out in the front in some areas where we did some fast cantering when the others were safely, far enough behind us. Tracey, Toni and Kelly in the middle where Toni was giving instruction to Tracey and Amira. And Alice, Katie and Judy right behind them. But there were several areas where we just stayed together as a group. It was just such a fun and relaxing ride. We all did the first "loop" for a total 10.7 miles and Tracey, Alice, Karen and I went back out later for about a little 3 mile loop. Very relaxing. Can't wait for the next one.

Me, Kim W., Toni J. on Amira, Judy, Tracey on Sammy, Alice Y., Karen H. and Katie. Kelly was the photographer.

Sunday was "get my barn chores done day" and go home and chill the rest. Plus get a little scrap booking in. And that is just what I did.

So, I couldn't have been blessed with a more perfect 5 day holiday. I could have asked for better I guess, but that would just have been plain greedy of me! LOL

Thanks for reading.