Rain Rain - GO AWAY!!!

Although the temperatures are wonderful being 60 out today, the rain has turned everything into a muddy mess.  The pasture is, well, just plain gross!
Will bought more 2x12s today.  Work on the next stall is on the to do list!
This last week has been so busy.  I scheduled an appointment with Ms. Rachel to take photos of the horses.  We had some good friends over Saturday.  We went to church on Sunday.  It was a wonderful service!  Our Jr. High Sunday School class had a new student.  We hope she will be back this coming Sunday.
We had the vet out to give Airiah her shots.  She has about 4 more months to go.  We can't wait to see this next baby.  If this little one is anything like Shadow, we will be blessed!
My to do list tonight (yes 8:30 pm and LOTS still to do...) includes chores, some bookkeeping and emailing our trainers to check on when we can get scheduled for our next riding lessons.  I still have a little research to do online and then the never ending piles of laundry and dishes.
Life doesn't get much better than this, does it?!
Tomorrow will be a late night with the kids.  Will and I help lead the Jr. High AWANA group.  If we could only bottle some of their energy.  It is amazing.
Jayden is ready for bed, so off to snuggle with her for a bit and then get started on my long to do list.

Farm Name

We have had a ton of "Where in the WORLD did you come up with Hardenberg?"  Well, let me tell you, cause it is a cool story.  My great grandpa Carl was born in Sweden.  He moved to Denmark during the famine.  Carl ended up working as the head Shepherd at the Hardenberg Manor in Sakskobing, Denmark.  There he met my great grandma Anna Marie who worked in the manor.  They fell in love and moved to America.  Skip ahead...  When I was 8 years old my family moved to Knoxville (IL), my grandmother Edith (Carl and Anna Marie's daughter) thought it would be nice if I wrote to my cousin Jessica from Sweden.  Jessica and I wrote back and forth for years, then emailed.  We became fast friends.
For my thirtieth birthday, I decided that I was going to visit Jessica and try to find the manor, just like my grandma Edith did when I was about 2 years old.  So, Jessica did some digging on the internet and found what we hopped was the location of the manor.  We had a GREAT trip and yes, we made it to the manor!  It was a great day that I will never forget.
Anyway, when Will and I were trying to come up with a name that would have some meaning to us.  Finally it hit me upside the head when we were planning on some things we could do when Jessica came to visit.  Hardenberg Friesian Horse Farm was created!  I knew it was the right choice when I told my Grandma.

08/06/2007 me and Jessica

1/12/2013

1/12/2013

What a busy weekend this is!  We made a major purchase for the farm.  Hardenberg finally has a trailer.  It is a very nice two horse straight load with a tack room.  We are very pleased with this addition.  Now we will be able to take the horses to Reinebach’s for training, attend some horse shows and hopefully go for a trail ride or two.  We can’t wait to use it for the first time.

Will did chores this morning.  Everything is a muddy mess right now.  The horses have about 4.5 acres to run on in this paddock, but they like to congregate around the water trough and the barn and turn it all into mud and well…  Pooh.  J 

Shadow is in her own little paddock and stall that we will eventually have to move her out of once Airiah gets closer to her due date.  Until Shadow is a little bigger, she will have to stay in her own little area. 

We are on the road again to the Champaign area.  This time to go to our niece Audrey and our nephew (Audrey’s little brother) Bryce’s birthday party.  We can’t wait to see them all, but are bummed we don’t get to see our other nephew Max today too.  Hopefully soon!

Tomorrow we need to measure the horses again to see how tall they are all getting.  I can tell Palmer, Bella and especially Shadow have grown.  They all need to be brushed up and new pictures taken.