♣Ambitious♣

Yeah, this again. Completely missed the last quarterly review, but meh it would have basically been the same as this. Before we get to the categories, some highlights: Competed for the first time in forever Went through the whole leasing debacle Spent the summer with the war horse And went to my first Dressage show with him Added another horse to my regime for all of no logical reason Almost died Went to an event for the first time and saw Boyd Martin And onto the goals: Improve my equitation: I mean, with Miss El screaming at me to bring my shoulders back all the time, I guess my equitation had to improve at some point. Continue to open hip joint and soften ankle: Yes, actually. Sitting trot got pretty good. Strengthen my right side & continue to improve balance: Also yes, but I've been having trouble lately due to not working out as often. Can't wait to see how bad it is when I ride a horse again. Exercise 5 times per week: Was ...

So, after going ghost post my first Dressage show, I'd like to say that big exciting things happened for me and Roman and the barn gang. But, nothing huge happened. I basically reverted back to my mindset during that one awesome spring I had with Baby where I wasn't really keen on lessons and whatnot and just wanted to have some fun. Some really good memories here Prior to going to Culpeper, Miss El pretty pointedly told me that to get the stretch on Ro, I needed to learn how to let go. Literally. Like drop the reins and just leg him into a circle. It's a pretty simple concept, but the execution is a lot less pretty. Hence the 5 we got . . . anyways, Ro had a fairly intense summer between me and Fi. Both him and Sanibel had time off from the end of the show until at least the day I moved back to school. This was the good stretch, and yet I think for all but two rides, I slapped the jump saddle and a halter on him and went. I sat in the Dressage saddle wit...

Ok, let me start off by dashing some hopes: I was not competing. I haven't ridden a horse since August, and I'm not riding with the equitation team this semester due to some poor planning. That being said, there might be practice rides starting soon, which I will definitely be taking advantage of. You can't escape me, Carlos. Jumping away from my own nonsense I also stopped beating around the bush and became a full time member of the eventing team. Helping out at the vet box for this event is mandatory for everyone, so that's how I filled most of my Saturday. In case anyone forgot, I am not on my way to becoming a vet. As a matter of fact, that's one of the career paths that I have aggressively avoided at all costs (despite what my mom might say). We were being directed by Dr. Chad (not sure if that's a first or last name) who was basically Anderson Cooper but in vet form. It took a a couple run throughs for me to catch on to everything, but I got the...

After Saturday's success, I went into the show on Sunday with the goal to simply improve on what we had the day before. With a ride time around 3:30p, there was plenty of time to work with. Also plenty of time in the morning to take a lot more pictures. I ended up clearing my SD card midday to free up space. Y'all ever see something so beautiful it kills you on the spot? Fi had her two tests back to back, first with Sanibel then with Roman. There were a couple of scratches, so I ended up moving my ride time up to 3p at trainer's request cause it was a long drive home. He is, quite literally, a beast With the down time between Fiona's last ride and mine, we got the trailer mostly packed. Then I changed, we went to school, aaaaaand it wasn't as good as Saturday. I could not, for the life of me get the horse to bend. I think it was a combination of him being tired and not wanting to be away from Sanibel, but it wasn't happening. I kept trying and trying...

Had an easy start to the day on Saturday. Woke up around 6am, and we were on the road to the show grounds by 6:30. Trainer was the first ride of the day at a little bit after 9. It was a pretty dreary morning since the rain had stuck around from Friday. It drizzled on and off, but the clouds finally departed by the time I had to get myself ready. As we were schooling the night before, I noticed that my old and worn out show gloves were ripping and shedding onto Roman's half pad. Since I 100% did not want to walk into the ring with flakes of faux leather dotting my tack, I grabbed a pair of Heritage gloves from the VTO Saddlery that was on site. Bless vendors. My ride wasn't until 1:21p, so we grabbed lunch at an Italian joint beforehand. Guys, they had tuna bruschetta. I haven't had tuna bruschetta in forever. I nearly sobbed. After eating my weight in bread and tomatoes, we went back to Commonwealth, I changed and tacked up while trainer braided. Then it was of...

Yeah, it's a name. Sounds nice when it's your first Dressage show. Did I mention it was in Culpeper? At Commonwealth Park? Ya girl is moving on up. Since Virginia is so damn far away, we hauled out around 8am on Friday. Earliest I've woken up on a Friday in a long time. After packing literally everything at 10pm the night before, I was pretty tired and went in and out of naps for most of the drive. We arrived a bit after noon, unloaded with no problems, and got the horses settled. After that, we checked into the hotel, sat around for a bit, got lunch, then head back to the show grounds to school. The town was really cute, too! This is where we had lunch. Fi and I went for a very long walk with Ro and Sanibel around the property. We talked about things, laughing when Roman would give big snorts and arch his neck at, well, everything. He honestly took everything pretty well and only had a true spook when he saw something off in the woods at the edge of the property. A...

Finally happened. Another goal off the list. Song: "Aloha" by Møme https://youtu.be/1YRW1QRKTBc (I don't the music, but you should definitely check Møme out) Filmed 8/11/17 to 8/13/17

And by "discerning" I mean "couldn't cook even with the blood of Gordon Ramsey in their veins". I tried out this recipe a couple weeks ago after finishing a work out and having no dinner planned. I went straight to the Equestri-fit Group and asked Gabriela for some ideas. She recommended taco salad. I hadn't had Mexican food in a while, so I rolled with it. I used this recipe as my reference but decided to put a bit of a twist on it. It's easy to make one serving of this, and it's probably decent in the nutritional value things, but I don't pay much attention to all that. Just follow the 20 steps, and you're good to go. Step 1: Rush to the grocery store directly after riding because you need to get the pictures done for this blog post before your parents return from Turks and Caicos and start asking questions. Step 2: Venture into the produce section. Avoid buying copious amounts of blueberries while simultaneously losing ...