Trip to the East Coast

Last Monday, we came home from a week long vacation in the east coast. We flew into Boston, drove up to New Hampshire and spent the week there. We drove to Vermont a couple times as well.

The first day, we spent the whole day on the plane. Or, most of it.

The second day, we drove up to New Hampshire. It was about a two hour car drive. When we got there, we got a tour of the barn that was a two minutes walk away from our friends house (where we were staying). That night, we all helped make dumplings for dinner.

The third day, I went with one of our friends to the barn for a day. I wasn't able to ride that day, but I did get to help out, take pictures, and watch the other riders do cross country jumps.

 

On horse back, cross country is a long course of jumps which might include logs, ditches, large obstacles to jump over, and water, which your horse has to wade through.

We swam in the pool later that night, and after dinner played games outside.

On the fourth day, I got to ride. I was the only western rider out of the group of girls in the riding camp, the rest rode english.

Here is a picture showing a western saddle and an english saddle. Sorry the english saddle in the picture doesn't have any stirrups!

Usually, only English riders jump, because their saddles are better designed for jumping. I did a few low western jumps on a horse named Jaws. 

That afternoon, we swam in a pond.

On the fifth day I tried out riding English and did a couple more jumps. The stirrups on an English saddle (where you put your feet) were a lot thinner than on a western saddle, and my feet kept sliding out of them. Also, the English saddle doesn't have a horn, so it was weird at first, not having anything to hold onto while I was mounting.

On the sixth day, we watched one of our friends and several of the horse campers do a horse show. We saw them do cross country and jumping. Afterwards, we went mini golfing and swimming at another pond, with several small water falls.

On the seventh day, we had a lazier day of watching Olympics (go America) and filming a video we have wanted to make for a while. 

On the last day, we did a quick trail ride. I got to ride Jaws one last time. He had been a very good boy all week.

   

He's the tallest horse I've ridden. 17 hands!

On our way to the airport, we stocked up on these delicious maple candies you can only buy in New Hampshire. 

Yum!

Funny Photos

Over the course of about two years, I've taken a lot of pictures on my phone. And occasionally, the animal I am taking a picture of will do something hilarious. So here is my collection of funny photos.

Coale, looking at the jack-o-lantern a little suspiciously. I was trying to get a cute Halloween photo of each of them, but this was the best I got of Coale.

Sedona, right after we shaved her. I caught this picture on accident.

Buddy. He was hunting my mom's shoe in this picture. I don't know why. I took a whole bunch of pictures, and he made a funny face in this one.

Nono, licking his nose. I cheated on this one and took a screen shot of picture in a video I took of him.

This is Motormouth (I miss him), waiting for me on top of a port-a-potty. He scared people who were in the port-a-potty when he walked around the roof.

This is Roku, one of my family's friends fostered her. She looks a little disturbing in this picture.

This is Wally, the friend who fostered Roku's cat. 

Wally again.



Mittens, our neighbor's cat that we cat sit for occasionally.

Two less animals

Unfortunately, I now have two less animal friends at the barn.

We haven't seen Motormouth since September. No one knows what happened to him. We are hoping he found a nice family and a warm house.

I found this old picture of Motormouth, it's now one of my favorites.

Wings went back to her owner on January 7th. She is no longer at our stables. I will still be able to visit her and I can't wait to see how she's doing at her new stables. Her owner even suggested we do a trail ride.

Wings learns what "cookie" means

 Wings the horse loves horse cookies. And now, she knows the English word for it.

 One time, she was standing at the top of the mare pasture, eating her breakfast hay.

Natalie: "Wings!"

Wings: (looks up, acknowledges I called her, goes back to eating).

Natalie: "Bucket!" *'buckets' are buckets filled with grain and usually a supplement or medication of some kind. Most horses love to eat their buckets. Wings likes her bucket*

Wings: (Turns around from her hay. Pays attention.)

Natalie: "Cookies!"

Wings: (leaves hay and speed walks down towards me.)

Another time she had just recovered from an injury to her leg and we wanted her to walk and trot around the arena to see if she was all the way better. Wings got really excited (she hadn't been exercised for a while before) and started cantering. We were worried she would hurt herself, but she wouldn't stop.

Natalie: "Wings!"

Wings: (Ignores)

Natalie: "Wings! Stop! WINGS!"

Wings: (Still ignores)

Natalie: "Cookies!!!"

Wings: (Slammes on the brakes, turns around, and walks toward me expectantly)

Sedona's new haircut

A few weeks ago, I learned how to clip a horse (which is basically shaving off their winter coat).

We clip horses in the winter because they grow a thick winter coat, and have a hard time cooling down after exercise (If it gets to cold at night, they wear a blanket).

Before Sedona's annual haircut

During the process

Even farther into the process

Sedona's haircut

Goofy picture (I didn't try to capture this one, it was an accident).

Last Day Before Camp!

Today was my last day at horse before going to to an overnight summer camp with my friends from school. Today's horse section of the day was crazy. I had to exercise them in the morning around the time the horses would get their buckets (grain) and Motormouth would get his food. I lunged Sedona and then Wings. I took Sedona back to her stall first, which was a big mistake. Wings thinks she has to be taken first, whether it's for her bucket, for exercise, or for hanging out in Sedona's stall. She was whinnying loudly and she got herself stressed out. She was pacing in front of the gate and she pooped. While I was taking Sedona back, I thought she was hurt she was being so loud and upset. After I got her back to the stall, I didn't have any buckets (or cat food) ready, so I had three hungry and impatient (and very loud) horses (and cat) waiting. Fortunately, after everybody got their food, everybody was happy, quiet, and non-moving while they ate so I could clean the stall with them out of the way.

Wings

Motormouth

Afterward, I had time to groom Sedona. I brushed out her mane.

Tomorrow, I leave for camp. I should probably finish packing, or eat lunch… But I won't be at a computer for at least 6 days. 

Buddy always gets so sad when he sees my suitcase or when I leave for camp or vacation.

After trip animal update

Jax came over to play at our house twice since we got back. He's a little bit bigger than before. It was hot outside the first time, and he wanted to run and play fetch the whole day. The second time he came, it was still hot (It's been really hot around here lately). So our solution (we did this both times he came over) was spraying him with a hose. He ran from it, he ran to it, he several doggy shakes, he wiped the water off his fur and on our pants, and he ate the water. After spraying him, his fur was cold and it felt so good when he rubbed it on our legs.

Buddy is as friendly as ever (and when we returned from our trip, a little more clingy then normal). After two weeks in Europe, I had almost forgotten how much more friendly and tolerant Buddy was than other cats. Yesterday, he sat on my stomach while I did a bridge.

The horses have lately been overall good. My horse instructor is out of town for the week, so I'm helping take care of the horses.

One of the other people that helps with the horses sometimes braided Sedona'a mane about a week ago. Later that week, we round pinned all of the horses (Sedona, Wings, and Kona) together. Wings trotted and cantered a little, but when Sedona wanted to zoom past, she would stop and turn sideways so she blocked Sedona's path. We took Wings to the center of the ring and worked the other two. Kona cantered a bit, but Sedona blasted of and went Zoom. She ran (which is faster than gallop) at top speed, snorting as she went.

Here's Kona wanting to eat Wings' grain. This is one of my favorite pictures. She's been doing pretty good. Last week, we gave Sedona and Kona their baths on one of the hottest days. Earlier this morning, I round pinned her and Sedona. She ran around at full speed with her tail up and snorting. Sedona was not running or being helpful in any way, so I moved her to the center and tried to work her again later.

Lately, Kona and Wings have been becoming friends. Here's a picture of them eating together. When we returned them to pasture together at the same time, they walked over to the water together, crossed necks and drank together. Wings pulled back on her lead rope one day and got most of her back out of place. Two chiropractors came (two different times, her back was that bad), and now, she's better. We're walking and trotting her a bit each day to work her back up to lessons.

Motormouth and Sedona both explain to us very loudly how hungry they are until we feed them. When Motormouth sees the car, he crosses the street so he can tell us how hungry he is before Sedona gets the chance. I tried to get an audio of him when he was hungry, to help explain why his name is Motormouth, but it didn't work.

Teddy isn't at our house anymore. He left before we went to Europe, but we'll defiantly watch him sometime over the school year.

Our trip in London

I'm finally home from our two week vacation to Europe. We visited different parts of London, Paris, and the countryside of France. I'm only writing about London today because if I wrote about everything, that would be a very long blog post.

On the first day of our vacation, our flight left at five fifty p.m. We arrived in London at about noon and went to our first hotel. Later that evening, we all went on the London Eye.

This was my favorite of the pictures I took of Big Ben from the London Eye.

 The next day we saw a British history museum. I was surprised and confused for a while because what I was hearing made no sense. Like for instance, it talked about being part of the Roman Empire. That's when I realized that we were in England, not the United States, and England was part of the Roman Empire. Next, we took the Chunnel to France. I'll write about all our adventures in France later.

We nearly missed the train back to England from France. We arrived and got in line to go to the train. But it turned out that we needed to fill out Custom cards. After that, we got in to go through security, but we were running late. Fortunately, two families that would be getting on a later train, let us pass them. The guy who checked our passports worked quickly so we wouldn't be late.

We speed walked to security and threw our luggage on the belt (I think it's called the belt) and went through the metal detector. My sister and I got through first and started pulling the suit cases off the belt. Quickly, the rest of my family got through. My mom, my youngest sister, and I each took a suitcase and my dad and my other sister each took a bag.

We ran to our plat form and got on something kind of like an escalator, but that is flat instead of having stairs. Like those moving floors at the airport, except this one was at a downward angle. My dad and sister ran faster without suit cases, so my mom, my other sister, and I were still on the moving floor when my dad and sister were getting on the train.

When my sister, mom, and I got off the moving floor, the conductor blew his whistle (which I learned meant "The train is starting soon" or something like that). We sprinted to the train and hauled our suit cases up the stairs. By the time we got to our seats, the train had started moving.



We arrived at our hotel in London and dropped our stuff off and explored our room. Then, we walked to the somewhat nearby London museum, where we met up with our friends from across the country. We went into the Egyptian exhibit, saw three dead people not including the mummys, and saw the Rosetta stone.

After seeing some more historical items like sculptures, carvings, and an ancient chess board, we went back to our hotel and played alibi (which is a fun game similar to Mofia but the everyone has to say a short sentence of what they did the night of the murder and the killer has to change their's a little each time). Next, we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant and on the way there and back, talked about a song we're writing about Mystery Slop.

The next day, we ate breakfast in our friends' room and went to the Buckingham Palace. We saw torture devices, the Queen's crown, and the Bloody tower. We took a boat ride and walked past Big Ben. After taking a quick break in the hotel, we took a train, and then a double decker bus to see behind the scenes of the Harry Potter movies productions.

This was me with one of my favorite Harry Potter characters, Buckbeak the Hippogriff.  We watched a movie here on how the robotic movie characters like Buckbeak were made.

This was probably the most amazing part of the behind the scenes trip. For the Harry Potter movies, the Hogwarts castle was really green screened in the background. The castle itself was really a huge model. Everything was so precise, a lot of work must have gone into it.

After it was over, we said good-bye to our friends (they were leaving at 5 am the next morning and we weren't going to wake up that early) and went to bed.

The next day, before going to our next hotel, we went to the Buckingham palace and saw the guards. The marching band played "Uptown Funk" while we were there. We also visited the Royal stables in the Royal Mews.

A guard at the Buckingham palace

This was the horse parade during the Ceremony at the Buckingham Palace.

The next two days, we went to a nice hotel in a nice area. It had a lot of buildings and food shops. It was a place that a lot of people took the underground from their homes to that area to work. It had a cool bridge over a river pretty much right outside our hotel. That was probably my favorite part of London.

While we were there, we visited the Prime Meridian.

The line below my feet is the Prime Meridian.

Last, we took a cab to the air port because the underground was on strike. We took a twelve hour flight and got home at 5ish pm. We were exhausted and went to bed at 7.


One thing I noticed in all of Europe was that the pigeons were different there too. There was one pigeon with such dark feathers, I thought it was a crow until I looked at it's head. There were brown pigeons (which were probably my favorites) and even normal looking ones with white feathers on their heads like mohawks.

Horse exercise

I took care of the horses on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday by myself while my horse instructor was on vacation.

Here's me exercising Wings on Saturday. I love her mane in this picture. I'm round pinning her which means chasing the horse around so they get exercise.

If you can see my hair in this picture, yes, I got a hair cut recently.

And even though this is a little late…

Happy Father's Day!!!

Busted!

The Crows

I got Wing's grain and soaked it in a bucket for her when I got to the stables. I left it on the table to soak for a while before she ate it (we do this because Wings is 20 and her teeth aren't as strong as a younger horse's). While I finished up the other chores, the crows found Wings' food. They were all perched around her bucket, eating it. At one point, one was even sitting in it. I shooed them off (not before getting a few pictures!), but they kept coming back. Finally, I put the bucket in the tack room.

Wings

When I went to the mare pasture to feed Kona and get Wings, Wings saw me and headed towards me immediately. Kona followed a bit behind. I took Kona out first to give her food. Wings was not happy that I took Kona out first.

Here's Wings waiting impatiently by the gate for me.

Here's Wings kicking the gate. They're not supposed to do that because it could damage the gate.

Teddy's Great Escape

When I got home, I finally remembered to clean Teddy's cage. I brought one of my sisters in the room with me so she could watch him while I cleaned. When we checked in his cage, Teddy was gone. We checked the whole playroom even though I had a pretty good idea of where he was. Hamsters like to find little dark concealed corners or holes, it makes them feel safe. Whenever I played with Teddy, he often dashed over towards our closet, so I thought if he got out, that would be the first place he would go. 

I was right. We dug through our old halloween costumes and dress up clothes and found him in the back corner of the closet. He chad been smart about his escape. He found an open bag of his food and dragged a bunch into his hidden corner. He must have been working most of the night to escape, burrow through all those clothes multiple times, and start stashing food.

This is how far he had gotten overnight. Smart hamster. His plan was pretty well thought through, he had a safe corner (It was more concealed by clothes so it was dark and smaller), the clothes served as a protection against cats (Fortunately, he was in a room we don't let the kitties in), us, and the air conditioner, and he had plenty of food stashed for when he needed it. He even made his corner pretty close to the open food bag. He only left out one small detail in his plan. He didn't have any water. When we put him in his cage, he went straight to his water and took a long drink. Hopefully he won't do it again.

After his long night adventure, Teddy was tired. When we put him in his clean cage, he snuggled up in the soft bedding and started to fall asleep. You can see how tired he is in this picture.


There were a lot of animals that got busted for doing bad things today. Maybe it's National Cause Trouble Day. If it is, do not tell the kitties. They could top all of the other trouble makers to day. Especially one kitty, Coale. Coale has eaten many lost hair rubber bands, even thread. He also ate part of our Christmas tree and has snuck into our attic. Buddy has walked outside (He's not allowed too), and often goes onto the kitchen counter which he is not allowed to do because of breakable stuff (clumsy kitty and vases don't mix) and puts snot on the windows. NoNo (AKA Noel), has eaten ribbon, thrown it up, and destroyed his kitty bed (by kneading it really hard).

Running

Today at the stables, we exercised the horses by having them run in the round pin. At first, neither wanted to run although Sedona (the chestnut horse in the front) wanted to bite Kona's (the brown horse with her head sticking in the picture) tail. Then, Kona galloped for a bit while Sedona stood still. After a while, we chased Sedona around until she started to run. After she started running, she didn't stop for a while. In the picture, Kona was running behind trying to keep up.

When we exercise them this way, we do everything both directions. So they walk each direction, they trot each direction etc. In the middle of her run, Sedona suddenly stopped without slowing down. Then, she turned around and took off running in the other direction all by herself. That worked out well for us because it meant that we could just stand in the middle without having to chase them. Sedona knew the routine so well she changed directions all by herself. Kona was pretty happy chasing Sedona so exercised themselves.

Wings

The newest lesson horse.

Her name is Wings. She's from half-moon bay. She is nice to ride because she is so gentle. I rode her bareback for a while. The people taking care of her didn't give her the grain she needed each day and they didn't exercise her. Now she is not skinny because we have been feeding her the grain she needs. Since she's a lesson horse, the work she does helped her get stronger. She is here because her owner wanted her to get better care here, and because our old lesson horse, Masai died.

We miss you Masai!

My First Ride On Sedona!

This is a picture of me and Sedona. I've never gotten a chance to ride her because she is a more advanced rider's horse (she is my riding instructors horse) and she had a shoulder injury so she couldn't be ridden by students for a year and a half! Until now… She is recovered and after my ride with Masai, my horse teacher said I could ride her!

Me and Sedona.

This is a picture from the ride. After I first got on Sedona, my riding instructor put a lead rope on Sedona and let me get the feel of her. Soon after getting on we were riding around the ring. We walked, trotted, and cantered. Her trot and canter was very smooth. You could barely feel the bounces on her trot!