Outing Tomorrow!

Yay! We are taking the horses out tomorrow, to a non competitive endurance ride. It is exciting to be going out.

Today most of the day was spent at the yard making the horses look like they belong to someone, scraping an inch of grot off of the tack and finding all the bits and bobs we need for tomorrow.

I was cursing the horses for growing so much mane, until I realised the last time I pulled them was in June - Oops!

Now everthing is ready, I am just hoping that the rains holds off until we finish unlikely 

Goodbye Summer

It looks as though Summer is well and truly over. And, in perfect British weather tradition, it hasn't faded out gradually, but come screaming to a halt! To be fair, our Winters are not so harsh that we need much in the way of preparation, but a little warning would be nice.

I have a list of things I really need to do before the weather turns - get the horses rugs mended, get the thermostat reset on the central heating, get the chimney swept (I'm sure there has been a bird nesting in there) buy my son a new duvet, and dig out the winter clothes. I'm sure there are more....

Today I became aware of the weather change for a few reasons, firstly my feet felt very cold in ballet pumps, secondly I was anxious to find my fleece headband/ear warmer, and finally I had to wear gloves to do the horses.

Time to swap the polo shirts for polo necks, to start putting on a sweater as a matter of course and to fight my natural urge to hibernate.

But, there are some things to look forward to. I love Christmas (well, the build up anyway!) and it being dark and cold outside, while inside you are toasty and warm. I love the excuse to wrap up instead of bearing my (rather wobbly) flesh, and of sitting down to stews, and mash potato.

Also, I am hoping to take the mare hunting this year and this is very exciting, we haven't been since before the children which was nearly 6yrs ago. We are bound to have forgotten how to behave!

My husband and I are doing an endurance ride at the weekend, but I am starting to worry how I will keep the horses going over the winter - I have already noticed a difference to the time I have in the evenings due to the fading light. Now that my son is down to less than an hours nap a day I am finding time increasingly tight.

May be time to start looking at our daily routine to see what we can change/juggle to make life a bit easier, also need to look at ways to make the Winter easier - there must be something?

The No Snacking Plan

On my mission to quit evening snacking I have come up with a few ideas to keep my hands busy:

• Blog (obviously)
• Facebook (very easy to get sucked in and keep you away from the kitchen)
• Sewing nametapes into school uniform. My daughter starts school in September and I may have gone slightly overboard with the amount of uniform I bought. But that is a lot of sewing of nametapes (and you can watch telly at the same time)
• Have a soak in the bath, with a book preferably. It is virtually impossible to snack in the bath, despite what Cadburys may think - remember the Flake advert?
• Housework - this is dull and hardly worth a mention.
• Clean tack. This is good if you take your tack home with you, and you could watch a film at the same time.
• Learn a dressage test - I always need to 'draw' the test route, so snacking is not an option.
• Ironing - technically housework, but it is a bit of a novelty in this house, so may yet happen.
• Learn to Knit or Crochet (unlikely)

That is all I've got so far, but if anyone thinks of any others I will be grateful.

Blogging for Weightloss

I have got into a bad habit recently of spending the evenings slumped in front of the telly watching crap and snacking. Some of this is my husband's fault. He is tall and ridiculously slim and due to his job often misses meals, so lives in a constant calorie deficit. He likes to snack in the evenings - oven chips with mayo, cheese and crackers, ice-cream straight from the tub - nothing healthy or helpful to those of us who are weak willed and a bit chubbly.

I have tried diets, the most successful was a Low Carb bootcamp style diet, but the problem is I like food and having always been in active jobs I have never had to be too careful with what I eat. Now I am a mum and no longer working 12hr days mucking out and riding four or more horses I have to be more careful.

Dieting is dull. Being on a diet can make you dull, all you think about is food - what you can/can't eat, what you would like to eat, what you can substitute certain foods for. It can get obsessive, and to be honest I feel that is very unhealthy.

So, my new plan is to blog in the evenings. Two birds with one stone - I get to blog more often and I can't snack very easily while typing.

What could possibly be easier?

Back to Work (well kind of)

Oops! Just sat down with my laptop and looked at my blog - a whole month since I was last here. I have meant to blog, but with one thing and another it just hasn't happened, and to be perfectly honest there has been nothing very interesting to write about. We have had days out, days in and one trip to the hospital (knowing my son, likely to be the first of many)

But, half term is over and real life will be restarting tomorrow. This means the horses (one very fat one) will have a bit of a rude awakening. We have another ride planned for 1st July, 20 miles this time, so a bit of work is needed, not just for the horses.....

Both horses lunged today, and I will be hacking out tomorrow evening, hopefully a bit more to blog about soon.

Our first outing!!!

Finally! We took our horses out for an outing in our own trailer, and it was a success <little happy dance> The occasion? A 15mile Charity Ride.

As with everything, the 'relaxed' trip out required a lot of planning and organisation..... So, on Saturday we had horses to exercise and scrub (the gelding is naturally.a filthy beast) tack to clean, numnahs to wash, trailers to check, and an enormous amount of stuff to pack up - hats, boots, gloves, body protectors, water container, buckets, first aid kit and Polos to name a few.

Of course, having small children, the organisation did not stop there. We had to double check we had childcare, make sure there was something yummy for the babysitter for lunch and to leave the house in a decent(ish) state.

On Sunday morning we were 'lucky' enough to be woken by our son at 5.45am - no chance of oversleeping! We left the house at 9am armed with sandwiches, cans of coke and clean numnahs. The sun was shining!

The horses had been left in so they (well, the gelding) didn't get muddy. This turned out to be a mistake as both were very wound up. They had some mild sedation for travelling and we loaded up.

Both travelled amazingly well. When we unloaded, the mare looked very pleased to be out somewhere and the gelding was a bit of a knob to be perfectly honest! We managed to tack up and could get straight going, which was lucky as I don't imagine either of them would have taken too kindly to hanging around.

It was FABULOUS! Lots of long grassy tracks for some fun gallops canters, some wooded tracks and a little stream to cross (ok, so it was little more than a puddle) The horses were very well behaved for most of the ride, but half way round the mare got a bit cross and stressy. This meant snatching and jig-jogging, though to be fair to her, we were on a track with horses in front going quite slowly and some behind messing around - who wouldn't get wound up? We covered just over 15miles, the last 5 were the best in terms of good tracks and less horses but the worst in terms of aching muscles. We completed in just under 3 hours.

The horses were very sweaty, but still full of life at the end. They must have been tired though, as they actually stood tied to the trailer sharing, actually sharing a haynet.!

Travelling home went very well, and with no sedation (Yay!!!)

The mare and gelding spent the rest of the day out in a grassy field, before coming in to a good brush, a clean bed, plenty of hay and a well deserved feed. We had to rush home to relieve the babysitter, and get our daughter to a birthday party. Burger King for dinner followed by a hot bath, painkillers and wine. The most impressive part? We can still walk today just

A trailer based breakthrough, and a little bit of stupidity

My Darling Husband and I have been planning on doing some fun rides with a view to doing some endurance (his idea, not really my thing) but as yet, nothing much has actually happened. We are very good at talking about things, about planning and even going as far as to write the dates on the calender. But that is it. When it comes down to actually doing stuff we are woefully bad.

To be fair, the horses are not always particularly helpful. You may remember http://christie-unstable.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/trailer-travelling-problems.html our travelling problems. But here, we have had a breakthrough! We have been putting the mare in the trailer and feeding her copious amounts of polos and it seems to have paid off, for on Saturday, we travelled her round the village in the trailer with very little nonsense from her. Admittedly, she had been given the horse equivalent of a double gin and tonic and more polos, but Hurray! So, on Sunday we tried the same, but with the gelding in there too. There was the odd little bit of stupidity (from us, we loaded them in, then realised we hadn't undone the trailer door, so had to unload one horse so we could get back out idiots) but again it went really smoothly.

This means, that next weekend we are finally going on a charity fun ride!!! 15miles of new tracks and possibly the odd jump or two. And the best bit? You can enter on the day, so no concerns with us forgetting to post the entries.