Lauren excitedly standing in front of the house one year ago.

A year ago I awakened to the news that my 90-year-old mother had spent the night at the hospital ER while I slept blissfully unaware only three miles away.  It was moving day a year ago and my phone was on the charger in my car.  A year ago, with that horrible break, my mom started her final spiral toward her death in August.

A year ago, we moved the horses from their six acres in Wharton to their newly built barn in Richmond.  There were four of them, Bruno, Feather, Mick and Snow.  The movers showed up right on time and everything was moved to the new house.  I don’t believe I ever went back to the little green house.

The original view down the pasture to the barn.

The original view inside the barn with cow troughs.

A year ago, there was so much to be done with planting flowers, running fencelines, buying a tractor, creating an arena, welcoming our first boarders, and falling in love with our new farm.  It has come a long way.  While Lauren and I were pretty visionary, thinking up ways to utilize the space in the existing barn to the max, we didn’t even begin to imagine that another barn would be built and that today we would have 15 horses on the property.

Horses have come and gone both mine and boarders.  I have a friend who does my stall plates.  I think we have ordered almost 20 stall plates in the last year with all of the changes.  She always wonders where we are putting all the horses.  They just keep moving around I tell her.

Our pastures and arena have been re-defined a few times over the past year as well.  New jumps have come to live with us, both ones we have purchased and those that have been made.  Lauren has learned a lesson in don’t make anything you do not want to jump!

A year ago, while we were scrambling around to get my mom more comfortable with her broken arm, while meeting the moving people at the new house and getting the horses settled in, up in Colorado my filly Betty Sue was born on this day. I never dreamed that such an elegant yearling would be in my pasture a year later or we would be working to breed her grandmother to Flagmount’s Freedom, Feather’s great sire. In fact, I had never even heard of this Colorado breeder. I feel we are fast friends now.

One year ago, newly born Betty Sue

Happy Birthday Betty Sue!

A year ago, we didn’t know Bruno, my mom and my step-father Jim, would be leaving this earth bound for heaven.  I am thankful for not knowing.  Likewise we didn’t know the joy these new friends and boarders would bring to our lives either or the closeness that would grow within my own family with Ally’s family so close by.

A year ago, I couldn’t imagine riding a horse without pain but two new hips later, I can.  My daughter followed her grandma’s lead and shattered her arm this year but it is finally getting back to normal day by day as well.

A year ago, Feather had won ONE blue ribbon.  Now she has conquered the Zone 7 Finals as grand-champion and pulled off grand-champ at Pin Oak as well.  What a distance she and Lauren have come, in spite of adversity.

A year can be a lifetime or it can be a building block for the future.  I somehow doubt (and secretly hope) that I will ever have a year quite like this one again.

What a year, what a glorious, horrible, amazing, troubling, grief-filled, elation-filled year! Thank you for always riding along with us and sharing it all!