Cave Creek/Carefree Lighted Christmas Parade

We needed to be in our staging area BEFORE 4:30 so I aimed early and actually accomplished this! In fact we were there by 4!!!

Sister hug!

Getting ready




Some pics without flash while waiting...









Laurie with Spot, and behind them, Jennifer with Ellie Mae
Mikey with Peter Pan (wow did that flash pick up the red or what?) and Mercy with Ozzie

Our poop scooping crew, Dan and David
Isn't David's hat appropriate???
My sweet lil girl Sarah Beth was being such a pistol, the inexperienced gal that was supposed to walk her got lucky that my horse friends Keith and Kat showed up to wrangle her!
Our little snow princess and her mount Foxy
My lil precious Emily Ann (this is our bottle baby!)
What a ham...


Milly Jo refused to walk the whole first half of the parade... so this poor dad had to PUSH!

Santa was pulled, but not by 8 tiny reindeer...
It's my granddonkey MADELINE!
Winchester...
Yup still pushing {sigh} - actually shortly after this, she got irritated enough to give a mighty kick, which dad luckily dodged! And she walked the rest of the parade nice as you please!!!


You wouldn't believe who got the MOST applause...

Isn't she the cutest thing?






Betty Lou and Mathilda

Emily Ann again



A grandma picture with my Madeline...


A different perspective here:

http://thehorseshoeinghousewife.blogspot.com/2010/12/round-2-cave-creek-light-parade.html

Minimizing...

That's our goal as we remodel the house, to get rid of a bunch of stuff and simplify our lives...

But when it comes to Christmas that just plain sucks! I LOVE Christmas lights, they are so cheerful and pretty, and I usually do the WHOLE front fence in white lights, and the porch, both roof and railing, in colors.

Things are better but still tight so this year only half the lights got put up... the porch roof...

and the fence on the side in front of the house...


Once the parade is past, I'll snag a couple of the battery-operated light strings and put them on my Jeep again {grin}

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Better Late Than Never...

Finally got back onto the website and found the endurance ride pictures posted... so here we are, me and my Glory, in all our glory ;)











Only 4 more weeks until the next one - which will be my FIRST 3-day ride! Can you say n-e-r-v-o-u-s???

A Granddog Visit

No pictures darn it but the cutest story... we had dinner with our friends Frankie and Carol tonight on the way to dance lessons... last spring they took Darci's pup Justin home with them. After dinner Carol asked if we had time to stop by and see Justin, and of course I couldn't say no!

Well we walked in the door and Justin pulled a typical chihuahua move, he started yapping like crazy and backed up through the doorway into the other room, peeking around the corner at me and wouldn't stop barking... I talked to him, called his name, nothing worked... until I said, "Don't you remember Grandma?" Well I guess Grandma was the magic word, as he immediately stopped yapping and started wagging and ran right to me, jumped up on his hind legs, let me pick him up and smothered me with kisses... what a happy boy he was, he about wagged his tail right off his lil behind!

Now that's the greeting a grandma lives for!

Bye Bye Baby...

So okay I didn't actually shed a tear, but yeah my eyes were swimming... we had to take Andria back to town today, so that she could fly home with her husband. It's been a whole year since I was able to see her, and it might be a whole nother year till I see her again... damn it where IS that winning lottery ticket?

Miss you, punkin!!!

Flying Bullets!

I am quite disturbed to report that we were shot at today!!!

Went for a nice relaxing "Black Friday" ride in Morgan City Wash out by Lake Pleasant - what better alternative to the shopping hordes? No way was I getting into that mess...

We figured being a holiday that we'd have to share the parking area with shooters and ATVers and it was true. Once we got down into the wash and away, we had a lovely ride...

Until we were almost back. Just a hundred yards or so from the place where we exit the wash to return to the parking area, suddenly there are gunshots AND THE WHINE OF A BULLET as it passed through the middle of our group!!! We all scattered, a couple folks dismounted, and we started yelling... more shots were fired, then it was quiet. The one man in our group quickly rode on to the road and up, to tell the shooters that there were riders in the wash... one gal was on the phone with 9-1-1 and the Peoria Police were sent out. As we finally exited the wash and headed up the road for the parking area, we saw there were FIVE groups of shooters... 3 of them were shooting properly, into a hillside so they knew their backdrop. One pair of men off to the left was shooting off the top of a hill {shudder} and of course there could have been any number of people in the area to the other side - in fact if we had been able to park where we first intended, we'd have been riding right through there! The group that actually DID shoot at us was a family with young children, they were shooting into the trees and bushes, which means they couldn't see and didn't know their backdrop - which was the wash in which we were riding!

We are so lucky none of us or the horses were hit!!! Parking and riding near shooters is always annoying, they leave a horrible mess between the empty shell casings and the trash they use as targets. And gee whiz do you think they would pick up after themselves? HA! And of course the noise affects the horses, luckily mine aren't too bothered, they just flinch, but some horses get really upset, and it could easily cause a rider to be dumped and hurt! Most of the time, once they see us, they will pause and let us go on by, but sometimes we run into some real jerks... just like the ATVers, most of them are polite but not all. But I've never really worried too much, especially since my horses handle it so well, since I watched Randy teach our kids to shoot and I know that the number one rule is KNOW YOUR BACKDROP!!! Foolish I know, but knowing that bullets can kill I assumed that anyone out shooting would be following, at the very least, that number one rule...

Anyway we've never untacked and vamoosed quite so quickly after a ride, but we sure wanted out of there today! And as we left the area, Peoria Police were inbound - I sure hope they gave those idiots a wake-up call!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been depressed for 2 days and today I figured out why... because as I requested, Andria let me know when she arrived in town... which was Tuesday at about 4:30. Since, because of her plans and my life, I didn't get to actually SEE her until about that time today, once I did see her I realized that knowing she was here, and I was MISSING her, for 48 hours, was depressing...

So I'll throw it off and enjoy her visit, short as it will be. Tomorrow we ride, us four girls, like we used to :) Yup the younger girls are willing to get out of bed early to come and ride with their SISTER {they won't do it for just their old mom} - should be a great day, we haven't been able to ride all together since San Diego in June 2009!