What's Up Wednesday

I forgot how busy summer can be! Phew! There's a lot going on around here. My dad finally gave his retirement notice, and his last day is the end of THIS month. Of course he waited to make it official until June 1st, so we had very little time to throw together his retirement party here at work. But we've got caterers lined up, a tent coming, and even a cop for the event. So that stuff is moving right along.
I've had a few braiding jobs coming in as well. I guess I've come out of braiding retirement officially. Haha. These guys came out looking pretty good!

I got to ride my buddy Bradley on Saturday morning. My friend and I planned to ride together again, and we even got some media! Not only that, we jumped some jumps! I owe Bradley a big apology for making him jump out of the teeniest canter and closest distances on the planet... but he takes zero offense at anything, so it wasn't as bad as it should have been.

It's a little sad, I really was thinking that red jumped look awfully big. I think it's like 2'6". It's been so long since I've jumped! But honestly, Bradley is so big, it's like a cavalletti to him. He was all, "I got this chicken lady!" And he totally did. And we were just fine. Even if I seemed to be crawling up his neck a bit... Sorry dude. Honestly though, how lucky am I to get to ride this horse? He's so perfect and is really helping me out these days with all the emotions of Jampy being sick and Rio being hurt. And Badger being Badger.
I followed the major rule of the weekend after riding Bradley: No sitting down till bedtime! Because otherwise I would never have gotten back up.
My boys both had their hand walks, and Rio had a graze too. Plus mega groomies for both of course!

I took a brief break after tucking the ponies in with their dinner to watch the Belmont. Justify is an incredible animal. He never looked like he even had to work that hard. He was all, "how you like the view from back there kids?" to the other horses. And did you guys see the trot on him afterwards? Boy might throw some hunter babies in the future!
Anyway, after the race, I got in my truck and boogied up to Lowes. I finally decided to bite the bullet and get a freezer for the barn. Jamp's ice boots have taken over my entire freezer in the house, and there are shavings in all my food. Not that there's anything wrong with that really... but it would be a lot more convenient not to have to walk back and forth to the house 100 times a day. It was a good call, even if it's currently residing in an empty stall. It was too big to fit where I wanted to put it in the laundry room. Bummer. Another bonus? I can keep some ice pops in the barn now! Great treat in the summer!
After the Lowe's trip, I got home, unloaded that bad boy, and then headed straight to my braiding job. I had three manes, two tails (with fakes), and a mane pull to do. Busy night! I was home around 1:30 and was POOPED. 7 am came early for Jamp's boot change, that's for sure.
 I didn't ride Sunday, but it was kind of a gross day anyway. Not all that warm, and it was mostly pretty cloudy. I ran a few errands in the morning, and then spent much of the day doing laundry and straightening up my pigsty of a house.
The pugs got to have a little walk though, which they were super excited about.

And after that, they got to have a play date with Chloe, who is just the cutest:

Seriously. Cutest thing ever.
And then some friends and I headed to the lake to catch the musical act for the evening. It was an acoustic set, and it was great! We brought wine this time, and it was the perfect way to wind down the weekend.

All sorts of random other stuff happened too. I got the pool opened up finally:

Hopefully this weekend it will be warm enough to want to use it!
I had the septic guy out again to finish diagnosing the problem with the barn system. That crushed pipe we were expecting? It wasn't that. Apparently the whole system is failing because what was installed was too small. So that's not going to be cheap. Sigh. Is what it is right? On the bright side, it's a good year for all that to happen since I'm not using the ring right now anyway. And I'm saving all this money by not showing. Right? Sure.
And then the craziest thing happened on my way to work yesterday. I was driving along, minding my own business. Late for work as usual. And then just two cars ahead of me, this guy runs a stop sign at an intersection. The guy two cars ahead of me tried to stop, and then tried to swerve. He ALMOST made it, but ended up hitting the back end of the sign runner. Well both guys were driving work vans, so they're generally large, heavy, and taller than they are wide. The guy going straight wound up with a very messed up front end, but was upright and ok. The other guy, the one who ran the sign, wound up with his van on its side. He was ok too, luckily. But it was pretty scary to watch! And then of course I had to wait for the cops since I was the one that called it in. Fortunately, since everyone was ok, I didn't get stuck there too long. I was almost an hour late for work though. Good thing they're pretty understanding at my job!

I got to ride Bradley again last night, which was a total treat! My boys were a little neglected since there are only so many hours in the day, but they had their feet picked and got fed which is all they really want anyway. Bradley was actually a little "fresh" last night! And by fresh, I mean he carried his own pace a little and pretended to spook once which was pretty silly. But after about 25 minutes of good hard work, he was more like this:

Tired pony! He's so fun though, lazy or "fresh", he has a great brain. That's what I'm looking for in my next horse.
And that's what's up this week! What's up with you? Did you show this weekend? Or do anything else fun? What's new?