Outside Work

 The mares were taken from the indoor arena and put out in the big field so they could graze while we were walking. 

I should have taken a video of the filly when we walked out of the indoor, she exploded, zooming around the yard and every few minutes bucking. She was so excited to be out. On the walk though they came out of the field to the yard and asked to be put away. Rosalie was thirsty and wanted back in. That meant they all had to be put back in their paddock. After the walk and after breakfast I took Mark's car and drove a check to Herman pond management. No one was in the office so I just stuck the check on the table. Mark and Mackenson were taking the snow tires off my car and putting on the summer tires. 

When my car was finished I took that to TSC and picked up 12 bags of bedding and 4 salt blocks. Those weigh 50 pounds each so the car was really loaded down.

The bedding was stacked by the side door of the indoor arena for easy access to the stalls and the salt blocks were put in the paddocks. When In finished I went over to check the mares at the cabin. Mike was just taking Titus out for some ground work. Today he introduced the tarp.

That was taken off him and put at his feet. He learned very quickly it was ok to step on.

We had a nice day here. Mom spent some time out on the deck in the sunshine. Diane decided to sit out with her and get some sun. Rachel came over carrying food for the work day tomorrow and I came with eggs for mom and Diane. We all enjoyed sitting out soaking in that sunshine. While we were sitting visiting we could hear and see David mowing their lawns.  Mike was busy taking down junk and dead trees between the cabin drive and their drive.

Later this afternoon Berlica came with the diesel grasshopper mower and got our lawns mowed while Joan used the gas grasshopper mower and got mom's mowed.  

Lots of outside work got done today and hopefully more will be done tomorrow as that is now mom's workday. It is also the home schooling convention so we will lose some of our usual help. 

Blueberry, Rosalie and her filly were put back in the indoor tonight. We have frost warnings in the morning. Blueberry is not due for 6 more days and there is no waxing but this will be her first foal so I want her indoors. 

Welcome Baby Brewer

Jessica and Clayton had their baby boy on Monday but I waited to post the announcement until THEY posted it first. This baby is number 179 in the Meister Family. We were thrilled for them and thankful for a safe delivery and a healthy baby boy. Ruby, their red headed daughter was too. CONGRATULATIONS Jessica and Clayton!

Brewer James Leman

7 lbs 20 inches

We welcomed our sweet boy on Monday morning at 3:19 am. God answered all our prayers with a safe delivery at home, including big sis sleeping through it all in the next room over. There are a lot of moments throughout his labor & birth that I'll cherish forever. Ruby loves her "baby brudder" & demands to "hold that baby" a lot throughout the day. He has been such a little blessing so far

Need a Name

 We had a good walk this morning and stopped in just as mom was ready to walk to the table for breakfast. Joan helped her. 

She told Joan, "it would be a lot faster to put me in the wheelchair" and of course we all agreed and laughed with her.

Right after breakfast I left for the bank to pick up 8 five dollar bills and 8 twenty dollar bills. The neighbor sells eggs at $3.00 a dozen and I usually take 2 dozen and the twenties are for Braelyn when she cleans the apartment. As I was leaving the bank I was following an older man, he opened the door for me and I thanked him. He stopped me and asked if I was Apostolic (I guess all AC's look alike) and when I told him I was he replied, "I used to drive for Peoria Charter Coach and would drive your group to Indiana and to Alabama." We talked a bit then when he was walking away he asked one more thing, "Do you know what Marantha means."  Of course I pumped my fist into the air and loudly proclaimed, "Marantha, Come LORD JESUS!" We both smiled as we got in the car. The next job was to drive to Kroger on Sterling to pay for the fried chicken for Sunday. The lady that was putting the receipt on the ticket looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and told me, "you have a blessed day!"  Obviously another Christian. When I got back I went to check on Blueberry and found her waterer tipped over and pouring out. I was able to get it back in position but not until it lost quite a bit of water.

The middle paddock waterer was cleaned out and turned on and then the short shelter paddock waterer was cleaned out. 

This one was not turned on as I could tell the float was broken. Mike was sent a text and this afternoon got them both fixed. Missy and Cookie were turned out in the pond pasture for a few hours. Missy is 19 this year and Cookie is 20.

How quickly time flies. My next job was to bring Rosalie over to tease. She doesn't look pregnant but for sure was not in season.

Evan was hopeful but backed off when she pinned her ears and threatened to kick. Mark, Mackenson and Berlica were hard at work removing trees from the retention dam while Rachel and Ruth's boys were working on the big dam removing trees. 

The turtles sunning themselves on the floating trees were completely undisturbed by all the commotion happening on the dam.

I was on the warpath trying my best to sweep up Asian beetles from the house, apartment and gym. Just check out the sweeper canister when I finished.

What was sad about that was I left the vacuum at the apartment as we have guests coming in tomorrow and will need to check it again before they get there but when I got home there were probably 50 to 100 more on the sliding glass door of our patio. I swept those up and flushed them down the toilet.  Later this afternoon a cardinal flew into a tree near our living room window. I snapped a picture.

Just a few minutes later looked out the other window and saw rain. It was not raining where the cardinal was sitting. I stepped out on the porch and sure enough it was raining on the West side of the house but not the East side of the house. I had to take the video below to prove it. 

That rain stopped but out West we had more coming.

By the time the second rain stopped it was time to bring the mares inside. First though Rosalie was taken over to Evan and teased. The filly is a week old and she should be coming into her foal heat but would not get near enough to Evan to tell. She was much more worried about her filly. 

Her filly is doing amazing. She is curious and adorable. She is 7/8ths Friesian 1/8th warmblood and is also available for $8500.00 and can be reserved with a deposit of $1000.00 balance due at weaning.  If someone is looking for quality she IS! She is athletic, will be TALL as Rosalie stands a solid 17 hands and will truly be magnificent. If she doesn't sell I'm happy to keep her as she is actually worth a lot more as a brood mare for us. 

This filly needs a name and it needs to start with D, E or F.  

Mike had gone to Middle grove to pick up Dancer and brought Titus home too. I took the golf car over to the cabin field to check him out. They all came walking up. Dancer is behind Rosaleigh to the left and Sheena is behind her to the right and Titus is last in the picture below.

Titus stopped to check out his reflection in the window. 

Dancer is due May 5th so we thought we'd better bring her home as this is a first foal for her.

Dancer is 75% Friesian so her foal will be 7/8ths Friesian and hopefully black. The bottom two pictures are of Titus. He is a purebred Friesian registered and dna'd with FHHI. He is HUGE and won't be 3 years old until August. 

We are going to put some more training on Titus then post him for sale. He should end up close to 17 hands and has a wonderfully sweet disposition. He really does want to please so will make a wonderful family horse. He is $15,000.00 but once he has more training on him of course his price will go up significantly. 

Cold Wednesday

 We were both up early and as soon as it was light enough to see, Rosalie, her filly and Blueberry were put in the indoor arena. It was cold this morning and rain was supposed to move in by 7:15 am. The wind was already gusting and felt like rain at 6:15 and the mares were both spooking at the sound. 

They walked to the back of the arena when a wind gust rattled the back doors and all 3 exploded running for the gate.

Silly mares, they slammed on the brakes when they got to the gate.

Mark and I left by 7:00 am for the trip to Cummings Inc in Bloomington to pick up the motorhome. When we walked out of that office it was sleeting. The hour long drive home would alternate between a downpour to sleet. I stopped at the propane place on Farmington road to fill up the propane tank on the motorhome then Casey's in Hanna City to fill up the gas tank. The motorhome still needed to have  water put in the fresh tank so the motorhome was taken to the new barn, backed in to the outdoor spigot then driven over to the circle drive up by the indoor arena. The people renting it arrived around 11:00 am and were pleased. They are going to Dallas and will be gone 9 days. It was still raining and still cold so the mares were left in the indoor until around 1:30 pm when the sun came out.  As it was warming up the horses were taken out of the indoor and put in the paddock and the indoor cleaned. The filly's umbilicus is dry so I was not worried about her getting muddy and an infection but it was just so cold this morning I didn't want to take a chance of compromising her health. .As you can see below she is getting nice and chunky and can tolerate the cold ok but not a cold rain. 

Blueberry's udder was checked, no waxing and it still has a ways to go for filling but this is her first foal so she will need to be watched the closer she gets to her due date of April 16th, just one week away. Mark and I left for church at 6:05 pm and arrived at 6:35 pm. Craig Stickling had the message tonight on the passover and then the gifts of the Spirit. Click HERE to watch that.  We went to Culvers with the group for a late supper. 

Busy Tuesday

 I went out as soon as it was light to check Blueberry since I had neglected to check her udder last night and we had very cold temperatures this morning. I was glad to see she had not gone into labor. Everyone was fine but there was a hard frost. 

Above Rosaleigh and Sheena are grazing while Evan looks on. Below is Rosalie and her filly by Evan.

Rosaleigh and Sheena were taken over to the cabin field.

Rosaleigh looked into the cabin window and saw her reflection and was standing there admiring that pretty mare in the window.

It seemed like she called Sheena to check out that horse in the window.

They both were very curious. Good thing Diane didn't have guests, they would have been freaked out to see horses spying on them. 

We had a good walk this morning. I got a call from Cumming's Inc to say they found the problem with the motorhome generator. It was the fuel pump, when driving and the generator turned on the psi pressure dropped down to 1 so that needed to be replaced. I left to get ready for the Berean office while Joan, Diane and Ruth helped mom get ready to go. By the time I got back to mom's house Ruth was pulling the van out and Diane was bringing mom down the ramp. We had a very good morning at the Berean office. I only took the 2 pictures below as we were busy.

We had 31 Bible requests and more prisoners are now starting or working on the advanced study. We left a little early as I needed to drop off the Bibles, take mom home and be at Sarah's house by 1:15 pm. I made it 10 minutes early. She was taking a puppy to the vet.

This puppy was not thriving so needed to have his blood drawn to find out why. His white cell count was high so he was started on antibiotics and now was doing great but needed another blood draw to make sure all was well. Sarah shared that it cost over $600.00 each time they draw blood for testing. It has been years since we raised a litter of puppies, no wonder they are now so expensive now compared to when we did it. Our vet bills for puppies was usually less than $100.00 for full work ups. I stayed with the girls while she took the puppy. 

Eden had some homework to finish up while the other girls drew and colored.

Once Eden was done we went outside to play. They have a couple Magnolia trees in their yard that was dropping blossoms. 

The girls made blossom soup.

From there we went to the trampoline.

When it was time to go inside Zion and River did a pretty cool trick.

Eden was able to do this too. These girls are strong.

Rhoda called about then to say she was coming to pick the girls up as she, Iris and Zeke were all going for a hike. Elisabet also joined them as did THREE dogs. Rhoda brought Ruby and I think Millie while Elisabet brought Rizzy.

They all had a good time hiking together.  I left as Mark wanted my car to take the snow tires off but when I got home he and Mackenson were working on removing trees off Joan's retention dam. They got the snow tires off of Mark's car in 20 minutes. Mine will need to wait until tomorrow.