What's Up Wednesday

It's my FAKE FRIDAY! Woohooooooo!!!! Sorry everyone who still has two more days of work... I'm off to Florida tomorrow to visit baby Badger. I haven't seen him in forever! So excited! But that's not what's we're here for is it? Let's catch up on the past week.
I took over chore duty Thursday and Friday so my helper could have a long weekend with his family. I actually enjoy barn chores when I'm not rushing to get some place. I didn't have to join the family for turkey until 2:30 (or so I thought) so I wasn't rushed AND I had time to ride quickly. Less time than I wanted though because I had to wait for the ground to thaw out. Winter is the worst.

So I was super proud of myself for being on time...

And then as I was walking to the house to shower and get ready I saw that I had missed a text from my brother saying I should get to his house closer to 2 than 2:30. Yeah... It was 1:45. I texted back that they best start without me. Oops. But seriously, who changes the time at the last minute? Fortunately, everyone was just getting seated at the table when I got there, so i wasn't actually late after all.
It was a lovely meal but I forgot to get any feast photos. Sorry all, but let's be real. You see one Thanksgiving table you've seen them all. I was home by 6:30 to feed too, so it was a nice early day. Friday was another cold morning. So I decided after feeding that I should just crawl back into bed and do chores a little later when it was warmer.

This guy was pretty happy to hang out in bed!

The forecast called for mid fifties by late morning, so I figured the horses would prefer hanging outside a little later anyway. I was right. They stayed out forever! I rode both of them afterwards, but just flatted as it was getting a little late.
I can't even remember what I spent the morning doing on Saturday... All I know is that I didn't step foot in a retail store all weekend! I got on to ride in the afternoon and was hoping to jump Jampy around a little. Unfortunately, the local rafter of turkeys was at the neighbors house begging for a snack. I'm sure you can imagine what Jamp thinks about a rafter of full grown turkeys. I waited until they'd wandered back to the woods to get on, but Sir-Spooks-a-Lot knew they were out there somewhere. We had a pretty useless ride.

I cantered a few tiny jumps but decided to wait until Sunday for a real school. Freakin' turkeys!
Sunday I was up normal time to get some errands done. After that I treated myself to breakfast in town. I forgot it was the first weekend of the Holiday Market, so I was surprised to see Mrs Claus wandering around.

There were also some fiddlers:

My town is seriously the cutest. It's so small town CT, you almost want to roll your eyes. But it's adorable, and I love living here.
After my late breakfast it was time to ride. I decided to throw my wild stallion on the lunge line first. Jamp hates being outside and has never figured out that he can use his free time to get the ya-ya's out. So I have to let him do that on the lunge line every so often. I'm glad I did... He was wild! He even bucked a few times! (Jamp is very much not a bucker.) He was a freshy for quite awhile, but eventually settled down and I got on.

Jamp is honestly a really, really easy horse to ride. Except for that he's not. It's so hard to find the right horse in there. This time of year, he's usually a little too up and tense. But after the lunge I had a pretty tired horse. And you have to ride tired Jamp completely differently than worried Jamp. He's a little Jekyll and Hyde. I joke with my trainer that he's the hardest easy horse I've ever had.

It was kind of nice to jump tired Jamp around though. Not gonna lie... I haven't seen him in awhile! I kept the jumps small, I don't think any were bigger than 2'9". We haven't done much jumping at all in the last few weeks, so no need to break the old man. We did have one long one. I asked him to move up and he pretended not to hear me...

He decided to listen after that. It's a lot of work to stretch that long!

I'm sad to think this might have been our last chance to jump around until spring. It looks like winter is going to actually show up upon my return from Florida. But I guess we'll just wait and see. I want to make sure I get those dinosaurs put away before the snow though! I want to keep them around awhile.
After jumping Jampy around, I went to get Rio out. He tried to hide.

I let him finish his nap but we did get to have a nice ride. Look how handsome he is!

Take that EPM! Maybe next year we'll see if we can get that canter a little less hollow... I've been asking him to trot in a little more of a frame and actually use himself and it's been going well. But he's not interested in packaging up at the canter. I don't think he's strong enough, and at 21 he doesn't need to do anything that's too hard for him.
We were able to ride every night this week after work, which I was happy about since they're going to have five days off while I'm gone. We'll see what the weather does if it's longer... I'm hoping not!
But the best thing to happen this week is that my wash stall is all put back together and mold free!

Yay!

Did you have a long weekend, or did you have to work after Thanksgiving? Are you getting ready to wrap up riding for the winter? Do anything fun this weekend? Let's chat in the comments!