Another beautiful morning in horse farm diaries.

It is nice to be greeted by such a colorful sunrise.

Even Sweet Marie thinks so.

Today is Athena’s first day going out into the paddock with the Arab horses. She will be hanging out with the grown ups.

She seems to fit right in, exploring her new surroundings.

And when she is a little frightened, she knows that Monty is close by.

And she can hide behind him.

Life is just swell.

Another pretty morning. Today is Chuck and mine’s wedding anniversary. So Happy Anniversary to us. I’m sure the horses will be extra kind.

Ben was the first to share his good wishes.

A beautiful morning sunrise to greet the day.

Which includes a nice morning fog.

I opened a new pasture this morning. It was fun to watch the horses check it out.

They really get excited, running and kicking and playing with each other.

Tabu trying to catch up

Running out and running back.

Ginger hands out at the top to check out the view.

Finally they settle down.

Looks like a Monet painting.

Back down to the lower barn the S-family hangs out.

A nice morning temperature.

The kind of morning where young horses like to play.

Today there is a benefit horse show in Baraboo for diabetes. Yes, Nancy, this one is for you. Maddy’s horse Monty threw two shoes yesterday. (His shoes fell off his front feet) So he was out of the show. Someone Maddy knows at another barn suggested she take this horse, Ben. Ben is not ridden very often and never shown. So it was an interesting challenge for her. They did well in the riding classes, receiving four ribbons. The rest of the girls did really well too. As you will soon notice, my camera ran out of batteries so I don’t have many photos. If someone sends me the ribbon photo, I will add it to this post.

Haley and Maddy are in a showmanship class together. As you can see, they are really concentrating and not standing their chatting with each other.

Today is show preday, meaning lots of girls will be out here washing horses. I’m also expecting friends to drop by.

Beauty says hello. She’s here for breeding by Triton.

My long-lost friends have arrived. This is Olivia, the newest of the group. Today is my first day meeting her. She’s looking really excited about it.

Here is some more of the gang. Alisa and her daughter Emma, along with good friend Isabelle, who’s mother you will meet in the next slide. (One comment from a barn girl: “The brady bunch came out to visit.” All that blond hair. And what are they looking at? Obviously not the camera.

This is Melissa, Isabelle’s mom, holding baby Olivia.

This is Rebecca, thee Rebecca who actually writes comments on my blog, and mother to the new baby. She also has a husband, Bryan, and older daughter, Ava, along.

And here they are, meeting Spice. Ava is getting a kick out of the horses kissing her leg.

Olivia is meeting Athena. They are almost the same age. I do believe just a few weeks apart.

Athena is enjoying all of the attention.

Maddy finally gets to meet Olivia. She use to babysit Ava when Ava was a baby.

Evan meets Monty. Monty thinks he’s pretty cool, especially when he has food in his hands.

Emma has figured out how easy it is to become friends with a horse.

Ava gets a bareback lesson on Monty.

Meanwhile in another corner of the arena, the barn girls are getting back at Hannah for spraying them with a hose.

There she goes, out the door.

Someone, get the hose.

Revenge is sweet…

or is it? She some how managed to escape and get the hose from all those girls and start spraying them.

It will be a beautiful day in paradise. For those of you who have never been to Northern Wisconsin (and I mean way north near the UP border) I highly recommend it.

We had visitors this morning. I was watching them from the deck.

They were not big fans of me moving in for a closer shot.

So I watched them swim away.

Before we know it, they will be honking their way down south.

As you can see it is the 19th and we’re back at the ranch.

There is a beautiful full moon setting over the pasture.

Jump forward to the 20th. See I really am trying to catch up.

Many of the horses were “horsin” around this morning. Okay, okay, it is early in the a.m.

Hi everyone, Yes it has been awhile. Sorry about that. A lot has gone on this past week. Maddy and I went to visit my mother in Northern Wisconsin to celebrate her birthday. The only internet up there is dail-up, so I couldn’t keep this site up. Then we came home and my dear friend Rebecca came into town. If you read the comments on the blog, she is my most frequent guest. After that, there was another horse show up in Baraboo. So, I’m going to just throw a whole lot of photos at you and we’ll move on from there.

Some mornings when you walk outside, everything looks a little more colorful than usual. This was one of those mornings.

These views look like a Wisconsin calendar.

When you take that extra minute to see — things look different.

My son stopped by to show us a fish he caught.

Onto the 16th. Maddy and I are whipping through chores so we can head up north. Happy Birthday Mother!

We went to visit my mother and the first thing we noticed was a tree on her garage.

It landed right across the roof, but oddly enough, didn’t break through.

However, it pushed the sidewalls out and the center beams started to fall. We removed the cars right away. Didn’t look too safe.

Some people showed up a little later to remove the tree from the roof and saw up some firewood for winter.

Even though it was quite chilly, Maddy and Andrew hung out by the water.

Today is the 17th and it promises to be a warmer day. Not too warm, upper 60s, but the sun will be out.

The water sure looks peaceful this morning.

It is a spectacular view.

It will take my a few days to catch up. My friend Rebecca is still in town, so I have plans to spend some more time with her. But by mid-week I should be back on track. Take care everyone!

Ahh…looks like a beautiful day. There is a little storm excitement predicted for this afternoon—just in time for all of the high school graduation parties. By the way…congratulations to Ali, our barn graduate. I can’t believe I didn’t bring my camera to the party, so if one of you would kindly send me a photo, I will post it.

This next group of photos I will just label “a morning on the farm.” Taylor came out early to avoid her brother’s baseball game. What a wonderful way to spend the morning. (And this is after helping me clean a few stalls.)

Later, Tori showed up to join her. Enjoy your summer girls!

Hopefully the rains will give us a break today. It has been raining most of the night.

The lower pastures pretty much look like this.

For some reason, the horses like me to lead them over the flooded pasture to higher ground.

Bullseye is still hesitating. Like many of them, he isn’t a fan of crossing water.

Athena grabbing a snack before going into her paddock with Spice.

Just a pretty picture.

So S-baby is enjoys laying right on top of his mother’s hay.

And like most mothers, she just deals with the situation.