Welcome Sarah and Roy!

A few weeks ago I received an email from Dave's mother, asking how our May or June would be as far as receiving visitors. As we have essentially nothing planned other than working on the ranch for the foreseeable future, we said come any time. OK, they said - we'll be there next Friday!

Unfortunately I was sick as a dog nearly that whole week before they arrived. Actually, I might have pulled out of it except that after two days in bed I went ahead and traveled to the client in Albuquerque for the day because the trip couldn't be rescheduled. My 1 hour flight came in 4 hours late - really cutting into my effective time on site. Never the less I went home as scheduled... and arrived home much sicker than when I'd left. So two more days in bed - this time courtesy of codeine-enhanced cough syrup these days went much quicker than the first two. I was feeling pretty good by the time they arrived.

I'd warned Sarah and Roy that we'd be working much of when they were here. Saturday morning I went down to be a helper for the lesson as usual, and they came down to watch. Lessons went great that weekend, by the way. After that we went out for lunch and to look at refridgerators. We'd decided to buy Ginger a fridge for her birthday - we've been talking about it for awhile because the three of us are overfilling the one that we are sharing. We thought we'd get the fridge now and put it in the garage. As that was the day of Ginger's party, we were home by 4ish to feed the ponies and help set up.

The party was a huge success - not the least of reasons being that Jess did a great job of organizing, decorating, AND cleaning up, so there wasn't a lot for us to do.

Sunday turned out to be a really great day - we got a number of things done that we wouldn't normally have, and yet still had a relaxing time. It started with sleeping in until 9:00! Since we don't have lessons on Sunday until 1:00, we don't feed breakfast until about noon. So, Sarah, Roy and we had a beautiful brunch on the deck. Later Sarah helped me move hay down to the pastures, Dave and Roy worked on the old tractor and managed to get it running again. Our neighbor was running irrigation water to flush out the ditches - and at one point it overflowed behind the dog barn. So we cleared that dam, but then set about trying to syphon some of that water off to water our trees back there. (neighbor had told us to help ourselves to the water if we wanted any). Well, that was entertaining - took about 6 of us to stand around and get the hose syphoning.

After lessons were done on Sunday, we got Sarah up on Harley for a little lesson, while Dave and Ginger worked Shadow and Rio. Before putting them out, we grabbed a picture of all seven of our horses. All told, it was a long, satisfying day on the ranch.

Monday I went back to work, and came home to hear Sarah's tales of mucking out the barn for us. She said she liked it. And then she asked if it would be ok if they stayed an extra day... I said sure - and you're welcome to muck all of the stalls you want while you're here!