Christy's winter vacation

Christy was smart this winter and headed down the hill with Mel to live at Kalli's in Elk Grove. She has the fun job of teaching Kalli's students how to ride. Here she is with Bailey during a lesson.

The new Tahoe!

WOW! Enough is enough! We haven't had snow like this in years. Craig spent the entire day plowing, plowing and plowing again. My poor little Chihuahua, Lola, and Pomeranian, Jasmin, have to burrow out the back door whenever they want to go out. I keep an eye on them because I am afraid they will disappear in a snow bank and never return. The deer all wait on the outskirts of the Equestrian Center until we are done feeding and then graze on the hay we drop. They are very happy there are 40 horses that need feeding everyday. We actually have a young Bobcat living in the rafters of the goat pen hoping to catch an errant pigeon. Well, the kids are happy though because our schools are closed tomorrow for a "snow day". The power of the computer generation. I think our principal told one student and by text messaging, MySpace and Iming, the entire student body heard the word in about 15 minutes. At least there are 230 happy students in our town...and a herd of deer. Ahh, life in the mountains! (The photo on the left is our middle arena. You can just make out the fence line on the right. Craig has been plowing it in the hopes I might be able to ride before June!)

Feeding in the snow!

Hi Everyone,

Sutter and I had so much fun last night feeding in the snow. We haven't seen this much snow in a couple of years but it didn't slow us down too much. We only got stuck once, had to retry the hill coming up to the mini's three times (the key is speed!)and definitely were distracted by the mandatory snowball fights. Here is what the Equestrian Center looks like during chores in the winter! All the horses are managing the snow very well but are itching to get out of their paddocks and run a bit. That is on the schedule for today. We will take a camera to capture the ponies out in the Ranch pasture.

Lornie

Winter Wonderland

Lornie and I are sitting in the office today watching it snow and snow and snow and snow. We have gotten between 6 and 7 inches already this morning and it is showing no signs of letting up. Craig decided to take the day off and head down to Truckee to catch a day at Northstar. He sounded very happy a few minutes ago when I talked to him. After spending the last few days trying to clean up all of the snow around camp, I think he is excited to be skiing instead of shoveling. Camp fared very well in the early stages of the storm. We had lots of rain and snow, but we never even lost power (knock on wood, of course!)! Lauren is pretty grouchy about the whole business though as lots of rain and snow means no riding today and possibly for several days to come. We are thinking about shipping her and Valor to Southern California until April!
We hope you all came through this series of storms safely! We will post some photos of our winter wonderland once we see the sun again!