Success

Steven got here after noon and the first thing we did was bring Valiant over to tease Fire. This time she accepted him and he was successful on his very first cover. He was VERY well behaved, listening to Steven when he brought him over and walking calmly away when he was asked to. We are SO impressed with how the boys are handling hormones.
Melanie Mattix showed up to see Super right after Valiant was put away. She wanted to see what training Super has had. Steven lunged him for her, saddled and bridled him then Melanie asked to take him for a walk around the pond. This went well enough she asked to see someone on him. This is what we do when we have visitors, we ask THEM to TRAIN our horses. Melanie was game for climbing up and Super got a bit of a training session.

Steven moved in 2 new round bales both in the middle paddock. Ribbon has destroyed another round bale feeder. They just don't make horse round bale feeders strong enough for draft horses and cow feeders which are plenty strong rip out manes. I REALLY need to come up with a home made system.
Mark took my phone down to Meister's today, we are changing all the phones from Sprint to US Cell which gets better reception here at the farm. He brought my new phone home tonight and I haven't a clue how to set up voice mail or even make a call. Trying to read the booklet the type is so small old people's eyes (or at least people in their later 50s) can't focus and I can't read it. Where are my kids when they are needed.
Ruth and Fede butchered 3 lambs and gave each of us a shoulder that I cooked for dinner tonight. This was a special treat, even our dogs think so, they are enjoying gnawing on the bones.
The picture below is Nancy right after she found Spark during lunch at church yesterday. She is always SO happy to see her brothers.

And as long as I was down loading pictures off the camera, the 2 below are of Rhoda doing a bit of training on our 2 year old Ciera.


This morning the windmill was gleaming brightly in the sunshine but I didn't have my camera with me on the walk so had to go out this evening and snap this picture.

It's up but not yet working.
So far we have only had 2 trick or treaters.

Fire & Calypso

A Thoroughbred mare named Fire came here yesterday afternoon to be bred to Valiant. Her daughter Calypso is a 4 year old by RAVEN and she was suppose to also come but the owner felt she is SO big she would take up too much room in the trailer and will bring her today. Now the interesting thing that happened with Fire is that she showed quite strongly for Raven. We were using Raven to tease her as this will be Valiant's first time. We actually had to force her away from Raven to the breeding stand. Steven brought Valiant over and Fire emphatically said, "NO!" she would have nothing to do with him. It was like she remembered Raven from when she was here 5 years ago and would accept nothing but the best. We will have to change her mind, the owner wants a Valiant baby. Valiant is looking more and more like his daddy, he was so impressive when Steven brought him over and this is just a 2 year old!
Steven worked Jewel, Ciera and Super then had to leave, Rhoda showed up and worked Ella then left for her volley ball game. We spent the rest of this cold damp day reading. Dinner was hot split pea soup(out of a can and not very good)then into bed by 8:00pm.
Braelyn is coming this morning and we have a lady driving down from Joilet wanting to see Super. She is planning on being here at 12:30pm.

WOW Day Continued

We got home last night at 10:30pm and headed straight to bed but yesterday's wow day must be continued. Fred Witzig was the speaker at the Peoria fellowship hall. The talk was suppose to start at 6:30pm but in actuality trying to seat the hundreds of people that just kept pouring into the place caused the talk to start a bit late. Craig Stickling warned us before the start that this talk would take a while and if we needed to get up to stretch or use the restroom just do so, it won't bother Fred.
Well by the time Fred finished almost 3 hours had gone by and I saw NO one move. This man is such a vibrant gifted speaker, he has his master’s and doctoral degrees in history and knows how to TEACH. One of the first statements he made as he got started was: It is possible to use truth to bring division and yet NO WHERE in the Scriptures is there any intent to divide Christians.
I so much appreciate hearing the truth and have much to contemplate. He recommended some good books, hope the library has them. If you wish to hear Fred's talk, last night was recorded and CD's will be available FREE, just ask.
Today will be busy. Our John Bible study starts today at 8:30am, Nancy needs to be picked up by 9:10am which means I must leave the study early as it is my turn to have her for the day. I've signed up to work second shift at the lunch tables and will need to find someone for Nancy to stay with while working.
We have 2 mares coming in that will need to be teased and covered and the owner wants Valiant for the older mare. Hope Valiant is as easy to train as Evan was.

Wow Just WOW!

Wow what a day, the kids started showing up at 8:00am to demolish the walls in the 150 year old farm house. Mark and I had to leave for a funeral at 9:30am and by the time we arrived back they had an unbelievable start. Karin, David, Philip, Ben and Anna worked with sledge hammers, power tools, jack hammers and human power to remove enough of the walls to give me a vision of how nice this old house will be.
They stopped for lunch then went right back to work.
Below is a picture of Ben and Philip just exhausted once they quit for the day.

While they were doing all the heavy labor I was in playing with my grandchildren. Now I don't want to brag or anything but just look at the pictures below, aren't they just about the sweetest kids EVER!




Karin, Rhoda and Steven left off the house and started working horses and by the time they quit they had Super, Jewel, Ella, Zalena, Eliza, Ciera, Jenis, Valiant and Evan doing well. Many pictures were taken and will be uploaded on each of the horses website pages later.
Rhoda took Jenis over the barrels a few times.

The next few pictures are of Steven working Evan in the indoor. Next time he is going to do this I'll ask him to use the outdoor and a video will be made. Evan and Steven have a special connection.





Both Valiant and Evan are booked, we have 2 mares coming in for breeding tomorrow. The owner wants a Raven daughter bred to Evan and is bringing in another mare she wants bred to Valiant.
Mark helped move a bale in the empty paddock and another in Super's paddock.
We need to leave in just a few minutes for the fellowship hall and will meet at the playground in 5 minutes. Time to GO!

Sauder's Costume Party

Yesterday was the very anticipated day for the annual Sauder Costume party.
Ben & Taunya came over here to get ready for it and Rhoda immediately took Addyson out to see the new pony.



Jack got to try out the Johnny-jump-up and LIKED it.

Below are the party pictures and WHAT a PARTY that WAS. The Sauders put on a amazing party, one not to be missed with good food, prizes for the best costumes, and a scary walk down in the meadow. Check out the nose on the lady below.


Above is Jozef and Tina as the original Redneck couple and below is the Sauder family.


Above is Rachel as the lady that always loved the grinch with the her husband David as the Grinch. And check out the picture below: The NERVE of Spark and Rhonda to show up as Friesian Exterminators, and then come dressed in Friesian Fur and Feather.


Dorothy & and her cute little dog Toto were joined by the scarecrow that always wanted a brain.

Of course the Wizard of Oz theme wouldn't be complete without some Toto Treats.

Ben's family were the windblown family from Bloomington.

Philip was the plastic surgeon and poor Anna the patient. Check out the huge amount of FAT taken out of her belly.

Rebekah's dress was designed and sewn from start to finish by Anni her sister. Anni used coat hangers on the corset and curtains for the dress.

Check out the back of the dress.


Great job Anni. For some reason I couldn't find any pictures on my camera of Anni. She was unrecognizable and we all thought she was a Sauder boy walking around.
Kari was the Hebrew Slave mom Mariam and Noel was the Egyptian princess that raised Moses.

Karin is in the picture below, NOW SHE was really hard to recognize until she turned around.

Below are Jenny, Willow and Tate:

Johnny Hoerr was Zorro, Serena was his wife and their two daughters were 2 of the 3 musketeers, they would say, "don't mess with the dress!" to whoever walked by.

Andrew and Rachel came as dirt bikers, below is Andrew in his REAL biker outfit with REAL scratches on the protective gear from a few of his many falls.

Andrew & Rachel's daughter the butterfly below:

Luke did a great job with his costume.

Logan was the swamp thing that just climbed out of the lake.

Jessica designed and sewed her costume all by herself too. Such talent in this family.

After the scary walk, it was time for the greatly anticipated judging results.
The best costume for the under 12 girl category was Noel:

The 12 and under boy category was Isaac but he had left so the next in line won but I missed the winner. It should have been Luke but we think he had taken his costume off so he didn't get many votes. The family win was Ben's family, He stated, "we BLEW away the competition:

Rhoda won the women costume category:

Spark won the men's category by default. David Sauder as the Pirate Jack really won by a landslide he was so realistic but graciously gave it to the second place winner Mike as the scarecrow except Mike left so Spark got the prize.

Jozef and Tina won the couple category with their portrayal of a redneck couple.

Addyson found Tina's fake cigarette and knew just where to put it, her parents are going to have to watch her.

Below Diane's is comforting Willow after the very scary walk.

We all had a great time last night. THANKS SO MUCH SAUDERS for this fun annual party.

Ella the Pony

The day started out COLD, frost all over the car windows. Rhoda kept Braelyn inside instead of taking her on our walk. As we were walking, trucks started pulling up all carrying windmill pieces. TODAY the windmill is UP! Tara took pictures, once they are downloaded we will for sure place a few on the blog.
Rhoda decided to train Ella the pony this morning. We took a video of her, what a great pony she is! The music Rhoda picked out was not allowed and youtube disabled the audio. We will try something else tomorrow and replace this later but just watch this pony go through her paces.

Karin showed up a bit later so the girls worked Eliza and DaMita.


Such a beautiful mare. Braelyn was enjoying the girls work the horses.

They decided to get out Super and Jewel next. Below Super is waiting patiently for Rhoda to finish with the bareback pad.

Jewel was just turned loose in the arena and had to keep coming over to check out exactly what Super was learning while she was waiting her turn.


Today Super learned to go forward, stop and back up with Rhoda asking and Karin reinforcing. He had a SUPER day!
I couldn't stay, Mark needed credit card applications run and bills paid at Meisters. As soon as that was done it was off to Sam's to by food for Sauder's big costume party tonight.
MUCH more on that in the next posts.