FIVE YEARS!
Chris and I celebrated the marriage milestone on Thursday. Hard to believe isn't it?
He took off Thurs. and Fri. from work and we pretty much just hung out most of Thursday. We went out to dinner and picked up dessert at the Cheesecake factory. That evening we took Ruby and Kitt to the horse park and rode a bit (still working on getting Kitt to canter well ... it's a work in progress).
Friday we went to the Phoenix Zoo, which was great. Took lots of pictures, saw lots of animals, and discovered a lot of changes since the last time I was there.
Enjoyed sleeping in and not having work and having my guy around for the self-made four-day weekend.
In other news Zetahra is now 42" tall and is pushing 200lbs. Since we kept good records of Cinnamon Strudel's growth rate we have discovered that, at the same height, Z has about 20-30lbs on Cinnamon. Zetahra's going to be a stockier girl! Of course this was the plan and one would hope being half draft and half Friesian she'd be thicker than a QH/Mo.Fox Trotter cross! Her back is lovely and broad and her neck's really arched up and thick. She's started to get a little bit of feathery fluff on her fetlocks, which is quite adorable.
I need to take some more pictures of her. You think you'd be out there every day taking all sorts of images, but no, life gets in the way and you end up with 50 other things to do.
I have both of my videos shot for the ARIA test on June 5th, but I do still need to trim them down to the 20min max. I also need to finish answering the questions, though I think I'm pretty much done apart from the insane abuse question in which I have to list TEN instances of abuse that I've observed at shows. Egads, that's like ten questions in and of itself!
I've finished the essentially mandatory reading and am plowing through some other stuff to hopefully give me some sort of an edge. I hope I remember most of the USEF Dressage rules, or at least the portions that they ask questions about. The rule book is 50+ pages long.
Things are starting to come together, but I am a bit nervous about the whole thing as I feel like I'm going in a bit blindly. They give you a good amount of information, but this is entirely different than taking a test in school. In school you're given the information in class and know that any of that could end up on the test. Just study that stuff and you're pretty much guaranteed to do decently. Here, I'm told that there's going to be a test (four actually) with very broad generalizations as to what exactly it is that I'm supposed to know.
I am slightly heartened that Trish (trainer who has been helping me with Moab) managed to survive her initial testing and didn't have nearly so much preparation. Unfortunately she doesn't remember a whole lot of specifics so we're in a similar boat as far as going in to be tested this year.
I'm hoping to do well and be certified at the level I'm seeking. There are only 24 people currently certified in Arizona and half of them are at level 1, so being certified at level II should be a bit of a leg-up. Heck, just being certified should help, but again, I'm hoping for the level I'm shooting for and, perhaps, eventually getting the level III certification, which I think only two people have that level, one in Dressage, but I don't recall the other.
So now I need to get off this thing and go work the boy. I've been pretty good about shifting to the summer schedule and getting a couple horses worked each morning. It's been quite nice and I feel a lot more accomplished with my day!
He took off Thurs. and Fri. from work and we pretty much just hung out most of Thursday. We went out to dinner and picked up dessert at the Cheesecake factory. That evening we took Ruby and Kitt to the horse park and rode a bit (still working on getting Kitt to canter well ... it's a work in progress).
Friday we went to the Phoenix Zoo, which was great. Took lots of pictures, saw lots of animals, and discovered a lot of changes since the last time I was there.
Enjoyed sleeping in and not having work and having my guy around for the self-made four-day weekend.
In other news Zetahra is now 42" tall and is pushing 200lbs. Since we kept good records of Cinnamon Strudel's growth rate we have discovered that, at the same height, Z has about 20-30lbs on Cinnamon. Zetahra's going to be a stockier girl! Of course this was the plan and one would hope being half draft and half Friesian she'd be thicker than a QH/Mo.Fox Trotter cross! Her back is lovely and broad and her neck's really arched up and thick. She's started to get a little bit of feathery fluff on her fetlocks, which is quite adorable.
I need to take some more pictures of her. You think you'd be out there every day taking all sorts of images, but no, life gets in the way and you end up with 50 other things to do.
I have both of my videos shot for the ARIA test on June 5th, but I do still need to trim them down to the 20min max. I also need to finish answering the questions, though I think I'm pretty much done apart from the insane abuse question in which I have to list TEN instances of abuse that I've observed at shows. Egads, that's like ten questions in and of itself!
I've finished the essentially mandatory reading and am plowing through some other stuff to hopefully give me some sort of an edge. I hope I remember most of the USEF Dressage rules, or at least the portions that they ask questions about. The rule book is 50+ pages long.
Things are starting to come together, but I am a bit nervous about the whole thing as I feel like I'm going in a bit blindly. They give you a good amount of information, but this is entirely different than taking a test in school. In school you're given the information in class and know that any of that could end up on the test. Just study that stuff and you're pretty much guaranteed to do decently. Here, I'm told that there's going to be a test (four actually) with very broad generalizations as to what exactly it is that I'm supposed to know.
I am slightly heartened that Trish (trainer who has been helping me with Moab) managed to survive her initial testing and didn't have nearly so much preparation. Unfortunately she doesn't remember a whole lot of specifics so we're in a similar boat as far as going in to be tested this year.
I'm hoping to do well and be certified at the level I'm seeking. There are only 24 people currently certified in Arizona and half of them are at level 1, so being certified at level II should be a bit of a leg-up. Heck, just being certified should help, but again, I'm hoping for the level I'm shooting for and, perhaps, eventually getting the level III certification, which I think only two people have that level, one in Dressage, but I don't recall the other.
So now I need to get off this thing and go work the boy. I've been pretty good about shifting to the summer schedule and getting a couple horses worked each morning. It's been quite nice and I feel a lot more accomplished with my day!