Firstly, I missed posting this at the beginning of October because I wasn't done writing it, then Clarence decided that Google Chrome was the spawn of the devil for some reason and refused to open so I had to drop it for several days, then I was out of town (which I will address in the October Recap) for almost a week without access to my laptop so I couldn't fix the issue until today.
I thought about combining September with October, but decided against it because I knew that would only make a monster-sized post that I did not really want to mess with.
Ta-da. Explanation complete.
stuff that happened:
The first week of classes went well. I missed one of them on Tuesday because I didn't realize it met two days a week, but other than that there weren't any other hiccups. There are several familiar faces from last semester, plus a great deal of new people I hadn't met yet. Even though I'm taking five classes, I only have two different professors.
Christian left for a nine week program kind of like boot camp but with scripture teachings as well. Earlier this year a family from our church sent their son to the same program and had glowing reports so Mom and Dad decided that it would probably be good for Christian as well. We got a letter from him and he said the first night was the hardest thing he's had to do in his life. We are all proud of him because he wasn't being negative in his letter, he was just giving the facts and trying to find the positives.
Mia had her birthday and turned 9.
I turned 20. I feel no different. I still went up to the college for classes (but with donuts to share, courtesy of Mom, who got up and had them back at the house before 6:30 that morning).
We got the yearlings in for our equine behavior and training class. They were a week late and then we couldn't really do much with them because they needed to settle down and there had been a lot of rain so the whole area was a sloppy, muddy mess. And we spent most of our time moving cows back away from the yearlings because the stock/rodeo teams kept leaving them with access up close to them even though they clearly had been moved away by us, for two days in a row. By the third day with the cows not in the right place, we finally just left them because the yearlings were finally not freaking out around them and we were tired of moving them.
Everyone left for Maui. Lydia wasn't going for the entire time, so she left a week later than everyone else. I am holding down the fort, though mostly I'm only home to sleep and feed the chickens.
We had our first Judging contest down in Fort Worth at the Paint World. There was some kerfuffle about how many sets of reasons the contestants would be giving (2 sets for the lower level division or four sets for the upper level), we thought that they would be accommodating both levels, but it turned out that they were only doing the upper level. So we all had the option to go and compete and give 4 sets, or we could go and just practice, and then give our coach (Ms. Becky) 2 sets afterwards. It was a bunch of fun!
Our neighbor decided to start a couple of burn piles down in the woods, so when we saw smoke out in the trees and he wasn't answering his phone, we all kind of freaked out. Mom called the fire department and Lydia and I ended up running pell-mell (honestly I don't know how neither of us turned an ankle or tripped) down the rutted access road and through a decent stretch of over the knee tall brush (where we desperately hoped no snakes were residing). We found him down there and he reassured us that everything was fine. Mom was rather annoyed that he hadn't bothered to say anything to anyone else so no one would worry and Lydia and I were both a little annoyed as well because we had both just had long days and were tired and ready for showers and then we got this huge adrenaline rush and just ran (and that hill is not a gentle slope, nor is it a short distance, plus we had to jump a pretty decent sized mud puddle because we were going too fast to stop at the bottom of the hill), then had to go back up the hill and back through the tall brush, and then back up again to get to our property to tell Mom to call off the fire department and
then settle ourselves and catch our breaths. Yeah, the last time our neighbor did something like that his barn exploded. And there was a scare a month or two ago when someone else accidentally started a grass fire and almost got himself killed, and even though we've had a fair amount of rain I believe we are still technically under a burn-ban.
We had church people and other friends out on Sunday for a Labor Day celebration. It was nice.
The weather has settled down significantly. As I write this, I don't think we've hit the 90s yet *knocks on wood* and we've had a good amount of rain so everything's greened up again. Some days we haven't even hit 80. It's been fantastic!
I ordered my first ever book box from Owlcrate. It's the October box, so I've a bit to wait, but I was super excited about it because the theme is "Lost in a Bookstore," and what's not to like about that?! I've been thinking about ordering book boxes from various different companies for quite a while now, but finally decided to get over it and just try one to see if they were worth all the hype. So I'll wait patiently now.
The time when almost half of the church showed up in stripes.
The other time when half of the church hung out a little bit afterwards and talked about lava lamps because some of the lights looked like the inside of a fish tank and it was super relaxing and then lava lamps were brought up as having a similar effect.
Nana had her small group ladies out to the house while everyone else was gone for a retreat, and since there was probably about 6-8 of them they stayed at our house. I was shocked at the amount of time I spent turning off lights and fans in empty rooms. And shutting the laundry room door. And the kitchen was in a constant state of only being half-way cleaned up. And- wait a minute.
AM I TURNING INTO MOM?!
The chicken coop has more patches on it than a quilt, and yet something still manages to get in and kill my birds a few at a time. Like. Seriously? So I've moved the six remaining ones (two drakes, one duck, one rooster, two hens) to the tack room during the night, and then during the day they are in the barn in their movable pen. I've tried setting up one of Grandfather's traps to catch the culprit, but it hasn't caught anything yet. But I can't move the birds back into the coop until whatever it is is caught and killed or relocated. This has not been a good year to have chickens.
Horsemanship II is going well. I've had four different horses in the five times we've had class. The first one was one I did not want because I remembered him from last semester as being really slow, then again the lady that had him wasn't very firm with him, but I actually ended up liking him a bunch. He was very easy going, yes slow, but if you kicked him up to the jog or lope, he really wasn't all that bad. The second horse was actually pretty nice. She used to be a reiner, so she was pretty good about keeping pace with the other horses. Her only thing was she would start backing up almost immediately after you asked her to stop. Like, you would cue her to stop and she'd do it on a dime, then start backing up if you didn't immediately drop your hands and/or touch your heels to her sides. She'd back up all the way to Oklahoma if we let her. She and I got along alright, so she's the one I get to finish out the semester on. The third horse though. He was the slowest. SLOWEST. His name was Happy. You had to get spitting mad at him to get him to go. His walk was so hesitant. If you could kick him hard enough to get him to jog, he did have a decent trot, but to get him to lope was a whole different story. The fourth horse was the one I had for Horsemanship I last semester. We got along pretty well then, so I was excited to get to ride her again. She was a lot faster than I remembered. I asked her to lope down the side of the arena, and instead she busted out into a gallop. It was fun, but entirely the wrong time and place for that to happen, and scared me a little. She settled down after a little while, and we ended up having a pretty decent ride.
work things:
I had to bring in the three two year-old geldings, who are all out in the turnout together and who are lead out all together by one person. See, usually when I bring them in, I take the bigger one (Moose) in first, and then bring in the two smaller ones (Finn and Truman) at the same time because I'm comfortable leading two, but not three at a time. Well. The smallest one (Finn) is especially clingy. So when I went to open the gate and bring Moose out, Finn decides that he doesn't want to be left behind. So he pushes his way out between me and Moose, such that he gets hung up on the lead rope. And of course this is when I'm pressed for time and need to wrap things up quickly so I can head out for my last class of the day. Luckily, Moose is staying very calm and quiet (he doesn't look all that handsome yet, but whatever they did to him he has fantastic manners), and Finn isn't trying to run away, just to be up next to his buddy. I was able to grab another halter and catch him, but I wasn't very happy with Finn at the end of it all. And I was slightly annoyed with the fact that he had been trained to follow close behind whenever someone is bringing a horse in because he has almost always been lead in and out of the turnout with one of his buddies.
One of the owners said I was welcome to ride one of his horses whenever I'd like.
The new work schedule seems to be working out alright. It is a little trippy not going anywhere on Friday and then needing to treat Saturday like a week day and get up at the regular time though.
Two new girls were hired. One came all the way from Sweden.
music things:
I HAD NO IDEA THERE WAS A
Count of Monte Cristo MUSICAL.
*ahem* outburst over.
September is a hodge-podge mix of instrumentals and musicals.
I don't know what kind of taste in music I have tbh.
