I know I have been MIA for a long time now, but I am finally finding some time and energy (and remembering, for that matter) to come on here and post a new blog update.

Things that have changed in the past three months:

1. Calliope and Twister went to their new homes at the end of December. You may recall my last blog entry about trading Twister, my 2006 black solid APHA gelding, for Bucky, a 1996 buckskin NSH gelding. Twister's new owners just love him!!!!! They are riding him now and he is doing awesome. He has even gone on trail rides! I'm so glad they love him so much. He deserves a truly wonderful home. I think about him often. I know I will visit him in Illinois one of these days and ride him for the first time.. Bucky is a GREAT horse, a lot of fun to be around and all, but he was always too hyped up with my boyfriend and sweated so easily because of it. My boyfriend and I have also realized we want to get another AQHA-registered horse so we start team penning and sorting this year and hopefully hit future AQHA team penning/sorting events along with open events. Bucky is more of an endurance horse. We ended up selling him to a great Horsecity friend (Halo's mom on the bulletin boards) on March 16. He is working out GREAT for her and her family so far! I know he went to a super home. I found I had a hard time bonding with Bucky up until maybe a week before he went to his new home (when I knew we were going to find him a new home). I think it was because I really missed my boys (Calliope and Twister) and didn't feel a connection with Bucky. But then the last week we had him, he really showed me he trusted me and wanted to bond with me. It was amazing.. I am happy I will get to see him and ride him in the future when I meet up with his new owners!

Like I said on my last blog, Calliope went to his new home in Broken Arrow, OK, on December 30th. I had been so worried that I was making a bad decision about selling him to the people who he was going to, but when I arrived at their property with Calliope in the trailer and got to spend time getting to know the new owners and see the 14 year old daughter ride him, and view their facilities, I knew he was going to the best home!! They can not only afford to take care of him even if he, heaven forbid, had an accident or got sick, but they have amazing facilities (two round pens, a couple outdoor arenas, an indoor arena, 2-3 barns, and a nice big pasture with a pond! Calliope has it MADE. And they plan to get up to four horses eventually, but wanted to work with Calliope individually for a few months at least. The 14 year old daughter, Victoria, is a beginner rider but she has been taking riding lessons for a year at least and is also taking them on Calliope now. She wants to do 4-H shows with him, which is awesome because he LOVES doing those! She gets to bond with him and work with him a lot more than I got to, so I know that's perfect for Calliope. I did visit Calliope about a month after I sold him, and he was looking awesome and I got to ride him!!!! He seemed so happy there, so I was thrilled. I really got lucky in finding my boys such wonderful homes. It puts my mind at ease knowing Calliope, Twister, and Bucky are probably ALL in their forever homes. And Calliope and Twister's new owners know that I would consider buying them back if they couldn't keep them for some reason.

2. At the beginning of February, Pat and I moved to a new house. I thought it was the right thing to do because my roommate situation was bothering me at my other house (the roommate who owns the house was really bothering me.. She became really stuck up and not fun to be around.. I felt like I could never have friends over and like I had no control over anything done at the house.). We now live maybe a 10 minute drive from town (or less than that), but it's like 5-6 miles from town. We are out in the country on dirt roads and all. My car is never clean anymore, in other words LOL! We have a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home and rent is very affordable. Our house (it's a rental) is on three acres and a lot of it is fenced for horses and livestock. The pasture has a loafing shed for shelter as well. Things were going pretty well in the new house until we found out our landlord has not been very easy to work with on getting things done on the house. You see, our stove runs off propane and only one of the burners starts just by turning the burner on and two of the other burners have to be started with a match, whereas one will not work at all. And our oven doesn't start until you take it apart and light it with a match AND it doesn't go to the temperature you set it at. It goes way above it (Like 200+ degrees higher!). So we basically haven't been able to cook or bake much since living there.. :( Our landlord knew about this problem since the day we moved in and promised he would either get it fixed or get us a new stove. He FINALLY delivered a working stove (looks in worse condition than the one we had, but supposedly it works..) yesterday, but it is not hooked up yet. And we moved in Feb. 8th or 9th, so this is like 2 months after we move in that we finally get a proper working stove! And if that isn't enough.. Our windows and doors have horrible seals so our heat escapes the house easily and I'm sure bugs and flies will have no problem getting in and the heat can escape to the attic because the attic cover (can't remember what you call it) is broken and has a big hole in it. Oh, then there's the fact that we discovered our propane tank was LEAKING the day we moved in. Landlord was supposed to get the propane company to fix it, but never did. We tried getting them out to our place, and they never call us back or attempt to help us. Ugh.. So we spent a lot of money for propane and it should have lasted us two months at least, but only lasted a month. We haven't even had luck getting the propane people out to refill it so life has been very hard lately. I think I will try a new propane company tomorrow or Tuesday. Grr.. I'm sure there are plenty of other problems with the house that I didn't say anything about. Whatever.. The only GOOD thing about the house is that I can keep my horse there and have house pets without paying a deposit.

2. The day I sold Bucky, I ended up bringing home Ivette's (Bucky's new owner) 23 year old fleabitten gray registered Arabian mare, Casey, on trial. The deal was that if I decided I wanted to keep Casey, I would get Casey and Ivette wouldn't have to pay full price for Bucky. Well.. Casey is a very sweet mare, but again.. She wasn't the right horse for my boyfriend to ride and she wasn't exactly what I like in a riding horse either. She could also be hard to catch, but she got really good about letting me catch her once I learned her tricks. I kept her for almost three weeks before I took her to her new home with ANOTHER Horsecity bulletin board member, elfinbien AKA Kathleen. Kathleen goes to the same college as me and has been looking for a riding horse since her mare had to be put down in December (I think?). She really loved Casey instantly when she met her (of course Ivette was the one who advertised Casey on Horsecity and decided Casey could go to Kathleen) and she wants to do dressage with Casey, which is great because Casey used to do dressage with the owners who owned her before Ivette. I delivered Casey to Kathleen just two days ago (Friday) and like Bucky, Casey really became sweet toward me about the last week of having her in my care. I'm glad things worked out well with Casey going to a great home and Kathleen having a new riding companion!

3. Well.. With Bucky being sold and Casey recently going to her new home, that leaves Goldie alone in the pasture. But not for too long! Pat and I looked at a 12 year old sorrel AQHA mare for sale in Missouri yesterday. We LOVED everything about her! She is really a good lookin' gal and she is due to foal May 29 to a black overo APHA stallion. She is definitely the horse we have been waiting for! We both rode her and she rode great, despite being heavily pregnant. Now, we didn't ride her hard or long, but we took her through her paces and turned, stopped, backed, etc. She's a gem! We are for sure buying her and will bring her home at the very beginning of May! We are really excited about her and her upcoming foal! :) I am going to board her at a stable a couple miles from me until she foals, though, because my pasture is not suitable for a foaling mare, I can't separate her from Goldie at my place, AND we are moving on or around June 1st if all goes well..

4. Speaking of moving.. We found our DREAM home! It's also a rental house and is SE of town. It takes about the same amount of time to drive there as to our current house (10-15 minutes). It is a 4 bedroom, 2 bath doublewide home on 17 acres. It doesn't even LOOK like a doublewide. It has a nice permanent foundation and all! It has two carports (each can fit two cars), a screened-in porch and patio, a laundry room, HUGE kitchen with all appliances included, dining room, large living room, nice master bedroom with a SWEET master bathroom (has a double sink and a triangle spa tub plus walk in shower!) and three smaller bedrooms and another full bathroom. I really like that there is an entry gate to the house, too, so I could let the horses graze around the yard if we close it. We will also have two separate pastures (but will only use one of them) and a large barn in the bigger pasture. The barn definitely needs some work, but it's ok for the horses to run into a certain part of it for shelter. There are also some shade trees for shelter in parts of the pasture, so that's nice as well. The landlords live right next door and seem like very nice people! Pat and I both absolutely love everything about the house and property! It will be so perfect for us and our animals. The landlords said we get first dibs on the house. My close friend Amanda from Arizona (in some of the pictures in my photo album here) is going to live with us, too, and we will hopefully have a fourth roommate, too! It's affordable even with three roomies, though.

5. Well, our pet situation has changed a bit, too. At our previous house, our only house pets were Simon (my white cat) and Pat's hedgehog. Now we have Simon, Polka (a 1 year old female gray and orange tabby cat I adopted from the kitten rescue I volunteer at!), Rees (a 2 year old Corgi/Beagle mix neutered male dog I adopted from a Corgi rescue in February), Maverick (a 8-9 week old Husky mix male puppy we got for free at Wal mart - some guy was giving free puppies away in the parking lot.. We fell in love with little Mav! We got him March 15!), Goose (black rabbit with two white paws and a white patch on his head. think it is a male. We got him/her from Atwood's a week ago), the hedgehog, and also a toad we rescued and named Trevor. We are going to find the hedgehog a new home because we never do anything with her, but other than that we are happy with all of our pets!

6. I currently have three jobs - one of which has not started yet. I ended the equine research park job at the beginning of February when the study ended. I LOVED that job even though it required some very early morning hours. I am still working for EF College Break and started an internship with Oklahoma AgrAbility and the Sun Grant project in January. I am not very happy with my internship and have found I don't know that I want to have a full-time agricultural communications-related job after graduating in December. I am actually considering being a vet tech. At least until I figure out what is best for me. Which is why I am REALLY excited to say that I got a part-time job as a feline nurse at the local Cat Clinic! I am really excited about starting there next Monday! I had interviewed with them in the fall for their receptionist position (they didn't have any nurse jobs open then, which was a bummer), and I didn't get that job (which is good) but I was so happy when I saw they were hiring two part-time feline nurses!! My friend from school, Callie, works there and is graduating in May so I am technically replacing her, but I get to work with her during training and maybe a little after so that will be awesome! I am only going to continue my internship until I have 100 hours (that's what I need to make it one credit hour).

7. I have been sick A LOT lately and I need to go to the doctor tomorrow. My boyfriend thinks I have appendicitis or something like that. I have had stomach pains for the past three weeks, but it usually is bearable, so I wasn't too concerned. Until now..

Wow, sorry for the lonnnnnng update! That's not even half of it, either. Hopefully I can update more regularly again... Thanks for reading if you did! I am posting a picture of Goldie from March 16 when we hauled her and Bucky to Broken Arrow to ride at an arena with our friends.