*%&$@#@#!(@*#^(())

Holy mackerel! I have been working, and working, and working!!! Morgan left to visit Nana and Buddy and the rest of WEB Ranch last week and this week is at her dad's. I am glad she was gone as Cody and I were almost never home. I miss the Christmas morning festivities but as I made a trip first to Urgent Care and then to the ER for a bad nerve flare in my arms I had my own festivities. In this picture are Miss Sweetie Pie and good ol' Mikey at the hitching post at the warehouse. The lot of us have been in this same situation so much lately that I think even the horses are having dreams about work! We are almost done though. It will be SO nice when this season is over with. I have enjoyed the work and the cash flow but I think the company as a whole is ready for the late winter lull. I will write more tomorrow (uh... today) after I have time to edit photos. Hope you all had a lovely Holiday!!! Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Joyous Holidays!!!

Brilliant!!!

So I get a call from Cody today that starts out, "I was laying in bed with Hazel..."

If you have followed my previous posts you would know that Hazel is our oldest Corn snake. She is super mellow and is Cody's favorite hang-out buddy. She helps him with all sorts of things; from watching TV to cooking dinner.

While I am fond of the snakes, the combination of Cody under the influence of migraine meds (yea Tylenol Migraine!), napping, and Hazel in the bed seems like a bad combination.

And the story just got better. Apparently he got the idea to hang Hazel on the propeller of little plane that hangs over our bed. He then fell asleep. Of course, when he woke up Hazel was gone.

She hadn't gone far, luckily, but she did manage to wedge her 3' + body into the smallest plane with an open fuselage that we own. He and Morgan managed to coax Hazel out of her new favorite spot but it did take them about an hour and Cody had to disassemble the plane as much as could be done without making it unusable.

Makes my day of mucking and then weathering out a snowstorm in the flat lands of Colorado seem begnin!

Enjoy the photos! =)

Warming Trends

It's nice again. The weather is in the 30s and climbing. Each day this week should be nicer and nicer until Saturday or Sunday. Then another cold front will roll in though they are not predicting much snow.

Life in general is good. Morgan is looking forward to seeing the WEB Ranch gang next week and I am looking forward to being done with laundry. Well, for a day or so anyway.

Not much else except that with the weather warming the manure is thawing and I didn't have to use the pick in the pens today, only the metal landscaping rake. The dogs are enjoying not freezing when outside, and Morgan is back to refusing layers.


We found Cody's camera and so I thought I'd post the pictures from the other night. They are a bit towards the blurry side but show off some of the nice sights I see each evening on the carriages. Enjoy!

Both above are of the City and County building. Isn't it pretty?

Miss Sweetie Pie doing her thing!

Curtis Street

Daniels and Fischer Tower

Miss Pie pulling in behind Dolly and my riding buddy, Katie. (Katie is in the Santa hat)

Another co-worker, Allen. His cape is awesome! He had it shipped in from Scotland!

The 16th street mall decked out for the holidays.

Snow Tired

It was -10 degrees F this morning. Um... BURRRRRR! Little Brigs can now pee in less than 30 seconds and then will bark furiously to be let back in. He sleeps by the fire, and buries himself in any blanket or pillow he can find. He prefers to sleep under the covers with Cody. Cody usually indulges him.

Morgan is becoming more willing to layer. I have gotten her in three layers of pants and shirts, snow pants, heavy coat, hat, gloves, and boots for the last three days. What an accomplishment! Now if I can just keep her clothed indoors...

I am helping Marie out at her place during the week cleaning stalls and feeding to allow her to get paperwork and reservations done. Today I bundled up and tackled feeding and cleaning in the icy cold but sunny weather.

I am learning that manure freezes, water heaters only work on the bottom half of the tanks, and the closer you are to the transformer the more likely you are to black out when you hit the electric fence. In general it isn't too bad to clean because when you are moving you don't get too cold and in this kind of cold there is no mud. I have never before used a pic axe to clean manure before and find this a surprisingly useful tool to have around when cleaning stalls.

Cody helped out with the customer wrangling on Saturday night and he took some cool pictures of the carriages but can't find his camera. When we do locate it I will post new pictures.

Finally

I took my two finals today and I am DONE with school until January 6th! Yippeeeeee! I can not begin to explain my joy. It is beyond the scope of words.

It was a perfect day today. We woke up to snow, about 8-10", and overcast skies but by 10 am it was sunny and cold but beautiful! The roads were slushy but not too bad and the tests were not too difficult.

When I got home poor Cody had yet another migraine and the rugrat was watching TV with the dogs guarding her. I took the book bag and threw it in a corner with no intentions of viewing it again until January 5th.

I decided that it was so lovely out that I needed to go take some photos and you will see some of the best here. I walked the 1/2 block over to the park and Cherry Creek and took pictures of the iced over water, and then when I got home I took the dogs out for a photo shoot.

Brigs of course started to wrestle with Straton and I got both action and still shots that I am very pleased with.

We just had spaghetti as Morgan has declared Tuesdays spaghetti night and Cody is feeling better after a nap. I am now going to work on my crocheting and revel in the splendor of having nothing else to do.

I hope you all are having as wonderful a day as I am. I am sure Cody will disagree but I think it is the nicest day I've experienced all Quarter! =)

Thermal Shock

I am finding this place extremely fluctuate. This morning when I got up it was 9 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was a foot of snow on the ground. As it was in the single digits I donned my fleece thermals, sweats and snow bib overalls. I also had on my wool socks and snow boots, gloves and a hat. By noon it was 50 degrees Fahrenheit and I was ROASTING so I stripped the snow bibs off and the sweatshirt.

This afternoon Morgan and I had a date at the park to play in the snow. I picked up Morgan from school and head over to the park and realized that there was almost no snow left. The roads went from snow packed to dry by 4pm.

Work was decent until about 11pm when the wind kicked up and the temps dropped back into the 20s. And to think I thought that Phoenix had large temperature fluctuations. As Cody says, " If you don't like Denver's weather, wait ten minutes." My poor car has to be wondering what it has gotten itself into.

Flakey

Well, work is cancelled, and as we have have over a foot of snow so far and it is coming down even harder now.

Driving (the car, not the carriages) has been a little slick... actually there are tons of accidents. I had to go to class this afternoon and drove very carefully and slowly. People were passing me some but not much. I avoided brakes and had problems only when turning.

I put these snowflake photos on here because of all the things about snow that I find fascinating, the most amazing thing to me is that the snowflakes actually look like the drawings and cartoons I have seen over the years!

I know you all who have seen snow a ton find this humorous but I have only ever experienced "wet" snow before and yesterday when at Marie's the snow started to fall and landed on my dark sweatshirt I saw the little delicate crystals that look just like in the cartoons and I fell in love! Marie found me very humorous and so did Cody. Morgan is just as fascinated as I am.

Today's COLD has caused the falling snow to be a very dry powder and the tiny crystals are adorable as they cling to my clothing, and windows. I have wanted to take pictures of the flakes but decided that I could probably find ones online and voila! Thanks Flicker! These pictures are all very similar to the flakes I saw yesterday. Today's flakes are bigger and more varied. They are the prettiest thing I have seen in a very long time!
Well, as htis is the second ebtry today make sure to check out the previous post.

For now, I will get back to crochetting Morgan another "Blue Blankie". Her old one is starting to look rather ragged and she asked me to make her a new one. She picked out the yarn and I am crochetting away.

Let It Snow

It had gotten nice again, it was in the low 60's two days ago but the forecast sounded ominous. Last night I decided to check the weather online as it had gotten rather nippy yesterday and this is what I found:

Hmmm... Marie was worried about a big reservation that we have tonight and so I figured I'd take a look at the forecast. At 9pm I will likely be sitting on the carriage.

Yes. It does say "feels like 7 degrees." Obviously I will be donning ALL of my winter clothing. I am thinking that I will have to wrap my face if I decide not to go get a face mask. Decisions, decisions!

Brigs can do quite a number on himself when the snow starts falling. Cody got these pics the last time it snowed. He just runs and runs until he looks like this and then comes inside and dries off. Then he crashes and sleeps until he needs to pee again. Lol!

I still don't know if I am working tonight. Marie will call us all and let us know soon. If I am I am sure there will be another blog tomorrow telling my woes! Happy Holidays all! =)