Did I Mention I Love My Job?

How Could I Not?

It's Full of this:

friends

(human and equine)

and this:

my other babies

and this:

astounding beauty

and this:

It's a GIRL!!!

Wow, have I ever been waiting a long time to say those words! And, no, I didn't sneak another pregnancy in under your noses. One of the ranch mares was pregnant. She's a gorgeous horse anyway but pregnancy suited her well.

We've been watching her like a hawk over the last week as all of the signs of foaling started. There wasn't a whole lot of sleeping going on - at least on my part. I didn't want to miss the birth. My vigilance paid off. She finally had a beautiful little buckskin filly last night. And she had her early enough (10:30-ish) that the boys got to watch the whole thing! Grey (of course) was ecstatic to see exactly how a horse is born and immediately followed his comment on the subject with "Now, I just need to know how a human is born . . . exactly". Tough luck kid. Still not ready to give 'the talk' to a first-grader. I think the horse birth probably answered a few questions on its own though.

Almost All Out

Scooting Away from Mama

Finally up - after much encouragement and a couple of face-plants

Figuring out the whole milk thing

I can't believe we were lucky enough to see the birth. It was incredible. As the baby was working on getting up for the first time she let out her first whinny and ALL of the other horses answered her in unison. It was so sweet. They had been trying to get a look at the excitement the whole time - craning their necks around the corner of the barn and over fences. Now both Sunday (the Mama) and her baby are doing well. Maybe we can get a little spring-like weather again so the little one can venture out of the barn without Sunday herding her back in - and the paddock and pasture can dry out enough that we can go out without big muck boots!

All Work and No Play

So I kind of forgot that although we had some of our big stuff in the house before we moved in, we still had the real moving in to do. The unpacking. The sorting. The "where do you want this?, where do you want that?" -ing. I'm swamped with it. I don't think I want anything else I haven't already unpacked. The boxes can have it. . . until I realize I haven't seen the garlic press, the photo albums, or my copy of Paradise Lost. BUT, I'm done putting off doing the things I want to do just so I can unpack everything right this second. It may take me a year to move in, but I'm going to blog while I do it.

And here I go:

Yesterday was one of those days at "work". It started off with an early morning ride, which is a great time to run into some of my favorite reasons for "working" where I do.

(Yikes, sorry about that glare - sun, you know.)
We've been running into the herds of cow elk but the babies just started showing up! With such a wet spring the mountain is green and lush so they're all big and healthy.



This one is so little it still has its' spots. (They don't last long.) All the other babies we've seen in the last few days have already lost theirs.


After our first ride we still had enough time for a second shorter ride. We figured we had about an hour and a half as we headed off. We left the ranch to ride on forest service land for a little bit and ran into a parking lot full of emergency vehicles - Sherriff trucks, ambulances, and search and rescue trucks. We thought maybe the trail we were going to head up might be closed because of an accident, but none of the hikers standing at the bottom knew, so we asked one of the men that looked like he might be in the know. He apparently misunderstood my question of "Can we still ride up the trail?", because the next thing we knew we were tying big packs of rope, dry-suits, and who-knows-what-else onto the backs of our saddles and heading up a different trail. Each of the packs must have weighed at least 30-40 pounds. One of them was closer to 60 - much easier for a horse to carry than a person. So we sped up a very non-horse friendly trail to bring the supplies to the emergency crews already at a waterfall where a girl had fallen. We didn't stay to watch since there wasn't a lot of room at the base of the falls. Part way down a helicopter passed us and hovered quite close to the falls - glad we weren't there for that - horses and helicopters . . . not necessarily a good mix. At the bottom of the trail another heli was waiting so we tried to snap some pictures in front of it. (I know, I'm a huge nerd, I can't help it)
Here's Jody. Please note the very official looking man running up behind her to tell us the heli was about to take off and we needed to move. "They really stir things up, you know, ladies." (Yeah, yeah, yeah, but please don't call us ladies - might as well just have called us ma'am - the kiss of death.) Anyway, we're Search and Rescue now, back off. Don't we at least get a pat on the back, or a sherriff sticker? Sheesh. What, are you busy rescuing someone or something?



So, here are Holly and I a little further away. Weird, the helicopter is still there. Really, it is, you just can't get past my Elvis T and my big-mom hair to see it.




And again, where you can actually see the helicopter.



Anyway, our second ride took a bit longer than we had anticipated, but it was definitely a bit more exciting too.
P.S. The girl that fell is doing fine now, in case you were wondering.