GO GATORS!

They did it! They beat Alabama in the SEC Championship game and now have a shot at the National Title! Gotta love them Gators! You know where we'll be on January 8th!!

Merry Christmas!

The Bateman's sent us adorable hats for the dogs. So naturally, Jesson being his Father's son, we had a photo shoot! I am 110% sure that we had WAY more fun than the dogs did. Here's what happened:

First we had to get them to all line up in front of the Christmas Tree so they could get dressed:

Then we took several embarassing pictures:

Finally, we had to reward them with the bribes that made them sit still in the first place!

The dogs say "Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the hats!"

"E" stands for Eliminated

Well, Reno and I competed in our first show since April. It was a doozy! It took place at Fannin Hill Farm in Brooksville, FL. It was a 3-Phase competition which meant that Reno and I had to compete in three completely different phases. They are:

1. Dressage: Takes place on the flat (meaning no jumping). You have to memorize a set pattern around a ring. You change speed between walk, trot, and canter at designated points throughout the ring. You are judged on rhythm, smoothness, and your horses submission (this just means it shouldn't look like the two of you are having a fist fight trying to get around the arena). Overall, it should look smooth, balanced, and effortless. Here is a link to the pattern I had to ride and the layout of the ring if anyone is interested.

2. Stadium Jumping: A course of 10-15 jumps are set up in an arena. You have a designated time to get over the jumps in the pre-determined order. If you go over time, you get faults. If you knock any jumps down, fall off, or your horse stops at any of the jumps, you get faults. Faults are bad, you don't want any. Here is an example of a typical course. These jumps were higher than what I was doing, and the layout of any two courses is never the same, but this is a good example. There is no set way to get to each of the jumps. It is up to the rider to walk the course ahead of time and decide which way will be the quickest while also giving their horse ample time to analyze the jump and make it over cleanly.

3. Cross Country: A course of 10-15 jumps are set up over approximately 1500 meters. Again, you have a designated amount of time to get over all of them in the pre-determined order. These jumps are different though. They do not fall down. They are made up of logs, walls, and other solid objects. You have to be very careful with your approach to these because they are unforgiving. Here is an example of a low level jump (the type I do) and a very high level jump (what you see professionals and Olympians doing).

So, with the 3-Phase 101 completed, I can now tell you how Reno and I did. Placement-wise, the answer is not very well. But, overall, we accomplished what I wanted us to for this outing. It gave us a great place to start for show season and helped me outline goals for the coming months. So, without further ado, our results:

Dressage: This was the first phase we competed in. We received a score of 39, which is ok. A winning score would have been around 29. We were not the best, but we were not the worst either. The only bad part was, coming around one turn, Reno stepped out of the ring for a split second. This immediately eliminated us from the competition and took us out of the placings. We were still allowed to complete the other two phases, however, it was without any chance to place. Reno actually performed much better than I expected him to. And again, it gave us a great baseline for the upcoming show season.

Stadium Jumping: We jumped everything cleanly (meaning he did not knock anything down and he did not refuse) however, we were a little over time so we received 6 time faults. I was not upset about this (obviously, we'd been eliminated already, what's to get upset about!) but I felt we took the appropriate amount of time for us. I made sure Reno had a good experience and did not feel rushed to the jumps. We will get faster with each and every competition, but this was a good starting place for us.

Cross Country: I was least pleased with our performance in this phase. Of the 12 jumps, Reno refused 5 of them, meaning he did not jump them the first time I presented them to him. This meant I had to circle around and try again. This took up valuable time and was also not a very confidence building experience for either of us. This will be an area we focus on over the next few months. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest area to practice. The reason being, while you may make a horse very comfortable with the jumps that you have access to from your own farm, Cross Country is all about the horse being brave over fences he has never seen before at a place he's never been to. The horse must be able to see a fence and jump over it a few seconds later. Any hesitation typically results in a refusal. So, we will most likely have to trailer to other farms and competition venues to brush up on this.

And that was pretty much my entire Saturday. I had to be at the farm at 5:30am to feed Reno breakfast and get him on the trailer, and we didn't get back to the farm until about 6:30pm. Jesson was able to come and cheer us on for the dressage and stadium portions. I always feel better when he is at a competition with me, he has a very calming effect. Below is a picture of Reno and I over jump #6 on the Cross Country jump, the Tire Jump (for obvious reasons!)

Date Night

Each week, Jesson and I switch off who is in charge of Date Night. This week it was my turn. I decided I would cook Jesson dinner and then we could go see a movie. The food turned out so well I had to take pictures. Below was our "Date Night Dinner":

These are "Scallop Sliders" (mini-burgers) courtesy of Paula Deen. They have scallops, chives, cilantro, lime juice, and bread crumbs. We also had them with a Cilantro Lime Mayo. Yum!

These are parmesan crusted steak fries. They have a really crispy parmesan outside and a really soft, french fry inside.

And of course dessert. We had Peanut Butter Parfaits with shaved chocolate on top.

Turk's Doggles

Whenever we take Turk anywhere in the car he likes to stick his head out the window. The only problem is, his little eyelids are always blown back and he gets bugs in his eyes sometimes. Enter: Doggles. Yes, this is actually a real product. They are goggles specifically made for dogs. At first, Turk wasn't too sure if he liked them, but once he stuck his head out the window and realized the air wasn't blowing in his eyes anymore he loved them! Below are two pictures from his first experience with his new Doggles.

The New Car

When we lived in Gainesville Jesson was able to take the bus to school leaving the car for me to take to work. Now that we have moved to Tampa and live in the suburbs (away from the crazy college students) we need an additional car to get each of us where we need to go. After a lot of shopping around and test driving we settled on the Honda CRV. We wanted the space of an SUV with the gas mileage of a car. We found a great deal on a used one about an hour away from us. We brought it home tonight and love it! Hondas are the best!

The New House

Below are finally some pictures of the new house (at least the parts of it that were clean when I took the pictures!) I tried to take the pictures in a logical progression so that people could tell where all the rooms were and how they connected. Hopefully it worked. I am never able to do that so maybe some of you out there with better spatial perception will get it.

Here is the front of our house from the street. That is our little lawn that Jesson mows.

This is the view from the front door. On the right, where you can see the wall ending (past the 2nd table) is where the kitchen is. If you were to turn right immediately upon entering the house there are two small bedrooms. We use one of them as an office and another as a workout/scrapbooking/storage room. Neither room was particularly clean, so you don't get to see them right now, which is why I'm telling you about them.
This is a better view of our entryway that you could sort of see in the picture above.

If you walked in the front door and turned to the left this is what you would see. In the bottom left of this picture you can see the gray carpet that is in the entryway (just to give you your bearings). This is supposed to be the "formal" dining room. We don't have formal dining room furniture, so we turned it into a reading corner. We are currently working on upholstering two large (30" x 30") ottomans (one for each chair) that will make reading much more comfortable. For those of you that have been to our old house, that bookcase is actually the top part of the hutch that used to be in our dining room. We took it down, added a base, and painted it dark brown. Voila, instant bookcase. The door on the right hand side of the picture is our bedroom. Also not particularly clean so you will not be seeing it on this tour.

This is our family room. The door on the left hand side is our bedroom door again so you've just turned slightly to the right. The sliding doors on the right side of the picture go out to our backyard. More on that in a second.

A different view of our living room. Again, for those of you that have been to our old house, that is the same coffee table and end table, they just got painted along with the bookcase. We are tired of light colored furniture. The sliding doors lead to our covered lanai and fenced in back yard (which we and the dogs LOVE!) If you click on the picture to make it larger you can see it a little more clearly.

This picture was taken standing in front of the entertainment center and facing our kitchen and eating area. The front door is now to the right in this picture. We love the more open feel to this kitchen and the larger pantry (the double white doors on the left side).

And last but not least, this is the wall that goes from the kitchen (on the left) to the entryway (on the right). We still have some painting and furniture updating to do, and we are working on getting window treatments for the whole house, but it's a good start and a BIG step up from where we were living before. We love being in a house instead of an apartment or townhouse. It feels much more private and much more ours. Thanks for taking the tour, come visit anytime!

Haircut

Jesson has had this idea for a while now that I should try cutting his hair with a pair of clippers. For those of you that don't know Jesson very well, he is VERY picky about his hair. Which is usually a plus because it always looks nice. It was not a plus when he was wanting me to be responsible for it's maintenance. That was WAY too much pressure. We decided to give it a try anyway (with lots of disclaimers from me that I had never cut human hair before and the lony time I had used a pair of clippers previous to this was to shave my horse). Below are the results. Not too bad for my first time. It's a little shorter on top than we would have liked so we'll just have to remember that an 8 guard on a clipper really is too short for on top. Past that, we'll probably try it again.

The Move

Okay, so it's actually been a month since we moved, but I never really wrote about it. No time like the present! The move itself was...not fun. We thought we were really prepared, we packed as much as we thought we could ahead of time. Let's just say you should never ask us to help you move, because we stink at it! We were up at 6:30 Saturday morning and didn't finish until 11pm in Tampa, and we didn't even get the truck unloaded that day! We had to unload it the next day because it took us so long to finish everything in Gainesville that we were exhausted by the time we finally made it down south. The day started with us dumping a full can of paint down the stairs (of course it opened and spun all the way from the top to the bottom). And really, it didn't get much better from there. I do have to say though, Jesson and I both agreed that we LOVED walking away from that house for the last time, we do not miss it at all! Below are the few pictures we did get that were move related, and they're not much.

When we were moving things out of the old house it was much easier to just leave the door open and go back and forth to the truck, rather than having to open and shut the door. This left us with a dilemma as to what to do with the dogs. They couldn't run around on their own, and we didn't have a back yard to put them in. If we closed them in a bedroom they would scratch the door. So we put up the baby gate and they watched us as best they could. They weren't happy about it, but they survived.

Buddy helped us unpack at the new house. Yes, that is him sleeping on our office floor. We didn't get much work out of him that day.

Our Adorable Nephew!

Our precious nephew, Baron Tanner Bateman, was born on July 28th, 2008. He weighed 8 lbs. 7 oz. and is adorable! The picture below is of him at his first hockey game. It doesn't get more Canadian than that! The hat he is wearing is a gift from his Uncle Jesson and I, we are so glad it kept his little ears warm! We don't get to meet Baron until December, but we have no doubt his cuteness will hold till then! Congratulations Nate and Rory! You can see more pictures of Baron on Nate and Rory's blog, there is a link on the right hand side of our page.

Time to Move On

Well, Jesson and I are moving. As we mentioned earlier, he was accepted into a Graduate Program at the University of South Florida starting at the end of August. We will be moving to Valrico (a suburb to the south east of Tampa where my parents live). We have found a really cute 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a fenced backyard for the boys and a screened in lanai for us. We will be moving this Saturday (the 26th) and are really excited about it. We have been packing for the last week and our house is in serious disarray. We didn't want to pay for boxes (they're expensive!) so we have been driving around to liquor stores and picking up free boxes. One day, we went on a real spree and went to 4 different stores in one day. We got A LOT of boxes from that. Below are the results piled up in our dining room (yes, somewhere below that mound is a table and 4 chairs!)

Key West, Fl

We had the chance to spend a week in Key West with Jesson's parents. It was a ton of fun! The hotel was gorgeous and the city was so interesting! We saw performers on the pier one night, shopped on Duval, ate a ton of good food, went snorkeling, and even saw a drag show! It was a very fun and full week! Below are a few pictures of our adventures.

Jesson and I at the Southernmost Point.

Sign at Blue Heaven, one of the best restaurants we went to while we were there.

Jesson battled a sponge monster on Duval Street.

We found a cool shop selling masks.

Jesson got put in the stocks for jay walking....just kidding.

Jesson ordered a burger with shrimp on it, the waiter was very confused!

Hmmm......

Jesson is a pirate and I'm his wench.

Waiting for the drag show to start.

The fabulous Randy Roberts dressed as Cher.

Taking the boat out to go snorkeling.

Jesson's Dad checking out the fish.

Just a sign we found while out wandering one day.....

Hanging out on Duval Street before the sunset.

At the pier at sunset.

The last rays of the day.

Outta Gas...

Jesson has this rule. He calls it the 1/4 tank rule. Allegedly, when the gas needle reaches 1/4 tank, we are supposed to fill it up. The trouble is, if I get a little busy or don't feel like stopping I might let the needle get a little past a 1/4 tank. Well, when Buddy came to visit I let the needle get way past 1/4 tank, so far in fact that we ran out of gas on our way to WalMart. Luckily, there was a nice bench for us to sit on while we waited for the AAA guy to bring us more gas. So the moral of the story kids......always pay your AAA membership!

We managed to push the car off the main road onto a side street near campus.

Jesson and Buddy waiting........

.....and waiting.

My view from laying down on the bench waiting.

First Horse Show

Jesson competed in his first horse show a few weeks back. He rode Maggie who he has been practicing with in his lessons. They entered 3 classes and earned a 1st, 3rd, and 4th. I went along as groom, photographer, and horse holder. Below are a few pictures from the show as well as a short video of Jesson doing part of his course. Unfortunately, before he finished the camera ran out of space. Jesson said it was a very rookie photographer mistake! It's true, he never runs out of space while he's taping me competing!

Jesson and his trainer, Pat Deasy, discussing the course ahead of time.

Jesson and Maggie ready to go in the ring.

Taking a jump in nice style.

The results of lots of practice and hard work!