Winter Wonderland

This picture was snapped just before the dogs were let out. The snow is still coming down very light and fluffy, beautiful but not good for making a snowman, it doesn't want to pack well. Good thing or there may have been some snowballs brought inside and pitched at the person who stole a cup of coffee BEFORE the coffee maker was finished brewing.
At least he got distracted, put the cup down to get a spoon and I was able to snatch it and run.
This is a no, no in our family, one doesn't take the good strong stuff leaving the rest of the pot weak and infective.
Our anticipation is starting to build for the spring foaling. We have 2 mares due in March. Some years we are able to be with just about every mare as she is foaling and some years we miss the births by minutes. Below is Ylse foaling in 2009, one we were able to video tape from beginning to end. We are praying 2011 will be a good year with no losses. We had some hard losses in 2010 then made the decision to not breed back some of our riding mares. We only have 8 foals due this year and each one is precious.

Wynne and Lily are due in March, Sangria is due in April, Velvet and Sanna are due in May, Ylse is due in July, with Jenis and Ribbon due in August. Of course we had a lot of outside mares and hopefully each one of those owners will email pictures. They all promise but as we have learned in the past it is so easy to forget once the foal is on the ground. There are MANY Raven babies we never get to see. We had 2 outside purebred Friesian mares covered in 2010, one from a small town in Illinois and one from Arkansas, the owner's email addresses were saved as we for sure want pictures of those foals even if we have to drive there with the camera. Although the trip to Arkansas would be hard.