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Yeah, I haven’t been on here a while myself. I sure do miss everybody so I thought I’d ping a few of the old-timers to see if anybody’s still out there.

Here's a few house pics. Some of them were taken a week or so apart, but they cover the major parts...

Front(north)...

Back(south)...

East side...

West...

Sun room fireplace...

We've still got a ways to go, but it's getting there. We're hoping to be in it by the end of April. Then it'll be time to build the barn!

WOW!! This is great news!! I know you're just thrilled to death! I'm thrilled for ya! It looks like a gorgeous place, and having trails and a creek right there, with salmon in it no less, is SO nice. But you know that Corin will really be nagging you to send him some salmon now! ;o)

I've been busy on our house too. It's getting close, but still not finished. I'll upload some pics here in a few minutes and post them.

...it looks a lot bigger than 2/2...

Well, I guess I didn't say that right, the main floor has 2br and 2 baths. The upstairs/attic has 2br and 2 baths too. That's the part we probably won't finish, at least not to start with.

Well, it wasn't quite as bad as it looked. I actually wasn't standing right under them. I was just outside the drip-line, but hubby was hollering at me to move too. The big long ones that look like they're right over me were actually hanging from the ledge that he was standing under. But he was right, if any of them had fallen, as big as they were, they would probably have knocked me down when they rolled down the slope.

TheHouse is one and a half floors with a full basement. The basement will be unfinished and just for storage and utility access. The upstairs has 2br and 2 baths. We weren’t going to finish it either, since there’s just the two of us, but it’s easier to get all the rough-in work done when the rest of the house is going up than to have all the mess of hauling construction materials through a finished house, so we decided to go ahead.

I did do something fun today though. My husband and I drove out in the Forest then walked to one of the big waterfalls that's not too far off the road. I had never seen it frozen before, so I really wanted to go there while it was still this cold. It was really pretty...

We’ve got wild pigs all over the Forest down here too. They’re absolutely tearing the place up. We very seldom see them though, just their sign. Be careful if you come up on a sow with her babies. They would just as soon gut you as look at you. They’ve declared open season on them around here, but a friend of mine lost all but one of his hunting dogs to one boar when he went hunting them, even though they had kevlar vests on. They’re MEAN!

Yeah, we've been below freezing here for longer than I ever remember. We usually get a couple of days below freezing in February, but then it warms back up and gives you a break. My "frost free" faucet at the barn is frozen down in the ground, so I had to drag my 150 gallon stock tank all the way from the barn to the corner of the pasture closest to my BIL's house and run hoses from his frost free faucet on the back of the house to fill it up. That gave me a couple of days of leeway, since I've got a heater on it, but when I went to refill it today the OTHER faucet was frozen. But it's supposed to warm up next week and I think I have enough water to last until then. If not, I guess I'll be hauling it in barrels in the back of the truck from somewhere else. NOT my idea of fun! It ain't supposed to BE this way down here! {Whine!}

...Is that an attached garage to the left or a barn?

That's going to be an open carport, because every enclosed garage I've ever seen has ended up being a junk room and you couldn't even park your car in there. But knowing my luck, and my husband's propensity towards being a packrat, that'll probably happen with the carport too, but I'm going to fight it tooth and toenail. We'll probably build a detached garage later on, but that'll be after we build the barn. My husband is just amazed that we're building the HOUSE first. ;o)

Yeah, I’ve got a Facebook account, but I very seldom go there. I mostly set it up because my sister-in-law was posting kid pictures there. I’ll have to go look you up though.

And a few more pics, of the house. Like I say, it's coming along, but far from finished. Hopefully it'll be done by March or April. The date in the camera was wrong. I had swapped batteries and didn't fix it afterwards. These were taken a week or so ago...

From the driveway...

From the front...

From the back...

Hey all! Just thought I'd pop in again and catch up.

Beaker it was great to hear from you again. I'm glad that Poland was fun and hope that you get to go to Japan too. That would be really interesting. Also glad to hear that you and TheFellow are still doing well. It's nice to have someone who really gets you.

Duchess, I love the sledding pic! So cool! But I'll hope for you that you don't get any more snow coz I know how much you hate it.

MT, you hang in there too. I hate cold, cloudy winter days so I'll wish some of my sunshine up your way. It's been pretty nice down here so far this winter, aside from raining every 3 or 4 days, which makes house construction veeeeery sloooooow, but it's coming along. It's supposed to be down in the teens at night for the next several days, and not much above freezing during the day, so I'm not looking forward to that, but at least it's supposed to be dry, and I'm really thankful for that, but I sure am glad I bought that stock tank heater a few years ago. It makes life with horses SO much easier!

Now, for a few pics, since nobody has posted any for a while...

These were taken at our last little weekend trip to Many Cedars Horse Camp in Hoenwald, TN, back about the 3rd week in October...

BladeRider on Blade, HaveFaith on Spec and me on Hope...
Our 4th Stooge and cameraman, Rhett, on Spot...

Blade decided he needed to read the map, since we clearly didn't know what we were doing...

Hope and I sharing a little downtime...

Blade trying to tell me that break-time was OVER...

Hope was perfectly happy for me to stay down there, so long as she got to keep eating...

Rhett discovered this technique and it turned out pretty cool, but the first time I saw it I about fell out of my chair. It makes me dizzy!...

The End

And a Happy and Prosperous New Year to All!!

You’ve got the apartment looking great Becky!! I love it!

...We are getting close to the two year anniversary of everyone coming to OK. Seems so much longer ago then that to me. It would be fun to do it again...It would be nice to hear from everyone, wouldn’t it:) I’ve been wondering if Frog is building her house?

I was thinking about our visit too and remembering how fun it was, and YES the house is finally started, just this week. So far it's just a hole in the ground, but it's a start.

{I know I said I was going to bed, but I just COULDN'T!}

OMG! Y’all came back!! I’ve missed talking to y’all so much! I used to check the thread some, but nobody was ever here, so I quit. I don’t know what possessed me to check tonight, but I’m glad I did.

As you can see, I’m way behind in what’s been going on. I do know about Hair’s Pony, but that was just by accident when I checked in on her blog one day. I’m dying to find out about everybody else, but it’s too late and I’ve got to get to bed. I’m leaving on a weekend horse camping trip tomorrow, but I’ll be back Saturday night so I’ll try to catch up then.

We’ve had a great summer of riding and have lots of good pictures and videos. Kari(HaveFaith) has become quite the videographer, editing all the pictures and video clips together with great songs, so we’ve enjoyed it.

Talk to y’all soon!

Beth

Glad to hear that the job is holding out. They’re good to have, even if they suck. Hope TheFellow gets one soon too. The trip to Poland sounds great. I’ll bet it’ll be interesting. Meeting TheFutureInLaws should be fun too. I’m sure y’all will get along just fine. The Castle trip sounds great. What I wouldn’t give to see one of those! You’ve GOT to post some pics when you get back!

Well, I’m a day late reading your post, so I’m assuming you’ve got all the painting done by now. The trip to OK City sounds interesting. Poor little guy. I’ll bet he’s not a happy camper in those casts and doesn’t understand why they’re doing this to him.

We’ve had some gorgeous weather the last couple of days and I hope you have too. Temps near the 70’s and sunny really give me cabin fever when I’m sitting in an office all day. We did have a pretty good snow last Sunday though and some of us went riding in it. I’ve got pics but I’ll have to post them later. Gotta get ready to head to work now.

Yeah, that’s ice in that picture. It had warmed up a good bit by the time the picture was made. That was the week that it got down into the teens. I’ll bet it really looked cool when it was completely frozen. The stone work in the other picture is an old chimney, all that’s left of an old house place out in the Forest.

I hate to hear about Bob’s fracture but I’m glad to hear that he’s doing ok and is letting the kids help him with the horses. Hopefully you’ll find good homes for the rest of the horses. It’s hard to do these days. People just don’t have any extra money right now.

Our drought seems to have broken. We’ve gotten a decent amount of rain throughout the Fall and Winter. It was actually raining pretty hard as I wrote this, and I was going to say that I was surprised that my satellite internet still had a connection, but wouldn’t you know it, right about that time it didn’t anymore, so I had to wait to send this until after I got home from work, then it went out again. So here I am on a Saturday morning trying one more time. I Jinxed myself I guess. ;o)

It was about 70* here on Thursday but they’re giving a pretty good chance of some snow on Sunday. You just never know about the weather around here. I kinda hope we get some snow. It’s been several years since we’ve had any and if we don’t get some by the end of February we’re pretty much done with weather cold enough to have any after that.

Well, I’m fixing to go to town and have a little breakfast with my husband and FIL. It’s not fit weather to do anything outside.

Hey Beaker, Hey Duchess! Hey everybody! Everything's been fine down my way. HaveFaith Bladerider and I have been riding a little, but not as much as usual. The weather's been either too cold and/or wet on the weekends, so we're really looking forward to Spring.

I finally got finished with my house plans and got a set of blueprints so I hope to be starting it this Spring too. That'll probably further cut back on my riding time, but it'll be worth it to finally have my own place and barn and all the horses under one roof.

Beaker, how's it going with TheFellow and the job?

Duchess, how's Bob and all your horses? You getting a lot of snow this winter? We haven't gotten ANY and I've been disappointed.

Becky, how's your new apartment coming? I'll bet there's quite a bit more done by now. You need to post us some more pictures.

Hair, I know you stay busy over at Baywind. I haven't been on there in quite a while so I don't know what's going on with you and your bunch either. I hope you and Bruce and all the horses, cats and dogs are staying warm and dry.

Here's a few pics of some of our recent rides...

Me and Bob...

Me and Grace...

Thought this one was really funny...

Me and Whirl. Not the best picture of her, but she's really coming along. She's barefoot in the rear with boots on the front or I wouldn't have had her up there for fear of slipping. I'd never done anything like that before but had seen it done, so I just asked her to get up there on the spur of the moment, jut to see if she'd do it, and she went like she'd she'd done it all her life. It kinda shocked me! She's absolutely fearless and has more heart than just about any of the others. She'll give you everything she has and then some, so you have to watch out for her or she'll over-do. And to think that the trainer said she didn't have any guts! Harumph!

I'll try to do a little better about checking in over here. I miss y'all!