Just a post about Kelsey

Last night I went and watched Kelsey lesson on Arizona for the first time in a very long time. The arena was dusty and dimly lit, however I discovered I can zoom and do slow motion with my phone. This made for a pretty cool video of Kelsey doing her thing. I decided to post a clip of it here.

Enjoy the rest of your day:

Bits and Pieces

Cool and hazy today, Chinook coming this weekend according to the weather person... will see if they are right. I personally would rather it just stayed about -10 consistently... anyhow picky I guess. Lets see what actually transpires this weekend... the following are some segments from last weekend and the days preceding.

Time to cleanup after the last residents

All Done ready for the new tenants... well almost.

The preceding pictures were of a pen that I spent some time cleaning. The next project was to then reconstruct it for the new tenants. This was accomplished as the next picture will attest:

New pen assembled and occupied.

Kelsey was asked to show for a fellow Riqueza client on the weekend, so Sunday it was up at 4:00 AM and off to a horse show to see how it would go. The following is a summary of this:

This is what my phone said it was outside

This is the trailer all ready for the horses

This is what my car said it was outside when we arrived at the Horse show

Yes it said -30 degrees Celsius...  Oh well the show was indoors and so all we had to deal with were the scary Christmas decorations.... it unfolded as follows:

This was her final round of the day and for the record Arizona's first clear round at a horse show ever! That's a pretty big deal by the way and now they are planning on her showing again at Spruce Meadows in February 2015.

To illustrate how big a deal it was the following is a copy of a shot of Arizona saying "NO" part way through their second round.

Now lets change tangents for a second. When we were packing I found a cook book of Grandma Webber's (my wife Gloria's Grandma) and it's been well loved and used. However for fun I took some pictures of a couple of the recipes I found interesting. I am sharing these with you below.

Something about seeing these in her handwriting really appeals to the sentimental side of me. I'm glad I have this treasure in my collection of books.

A little trip back in time

One of my daughters favorite things is to go to a museum park here in town called Heritage Park. This is a pioneer village setup in the heart of our city with houses from the city and countryside from around the turn of the century. I visited once as a child and remember vividly enjoying the time spent there with Mom and Dad. Since then we have been back with our kids a time or two. The most recent visit was this past fall when Kelsey and I went and spent a very pleasant day wandering through the grounds. The pictures below are from this visit.

First we walked by the horse paddocks.

This is a sod shanty similar to the one some of our ancestors may have started their life on the Canadian prairies in.

All of the horses on the park work for their living we enjoyed seeing this team relaxing in their pasture.

There may or may not be ghosts who live here, this would be one of the spots I would hang out if I was one of them.

I grew up on the prairies, I spent hours exploring old grain elevators and seeing them dot the prairie landscape. These two pictures are one of the exterior of the elevator on the park and one taken from the interior looking down the ramp.

We lived the last few years of my life at home adjacent to a prairie ghost town that had two elevators still there when we moved there. One was partially torn down and the other was operational. The operational one was eventually sold and moved in tact to another location, the partially torn down one was eventually dynamited as a person had died when they started tearing it down and no one else wanted to take on the task.

There is a paddle wheel boat that takes visitors for a brief sail on the Glenmore Reservoir. This was the flag of the time, however I also took it thinking of my Grandma... English to the core and still considers England home decades after coming here following World War II as a war bride with my mother in tow.

We proceeded to go on the wee cruise around the lake. The following was a picture Kelsey took with my phone of a very pretty tree.

Following the boat ride we continued to wander through the park, we stopped briefly for lunch and then completed a very enjoyable afternoon.

I liked watching the staff as they went about their day in the period dress and using period equipment where applicable if possible. Because it was cool most of the fireplaces and wood stoves were burning and the smell of wood smoke was everywhere.

We didn't ride in any of the horse drawn contrivances, however we enjoyed watching them for sure. The picture below was of Mac and Cheese taking a coffee break in the stable next door to the black smith shop pictured below.

There are several interesting restored homes on the park and we enjoyed exploring those.

The one pictured to the side was one of my favorites the floor plan for the largest and most ostentatious one is pictured below. It is supposedly haunted and ghost stories abound... however they weren't in a chatty mood when we were there and so we don't have any such stories to relate.

 

Sometime I would love to write a story purely fictional with these houses and such as the back drop... who knows maybe someday should time permit. I think it would be a lot of fun, however it would also take time and currently that is a commodity I don't have a whole lot of.

This has become a rather long post... oh well it was a really fun afternoon.

The grounds close for the season and then open briefly a limited number of exhibits around Christmas. I have never been down in the wintertime, however this year might be the year to go.

The forgoing is from inside a small stone house... another of my favorites... I have a weakness for stone houses. I found the center piece of the front parlor very interesting.

Kelsey took a picture of the train, I took a picture of Mac and Cheese back at work. Then we called it a day and headed home. We were walking passed some trees when a rustling drew our attention. There looking back at us was every hunters dream...

It’s a mild, nice “Chinooky” winter morning here at the foot of the Rockies. I am only working in the office one day this week so due to having a few tenders scheduled to close I will likely be spending most of my day right here. Thought I would post a couple of brief updates this morning so that I don’t forget these adventures as the busy-ness of the week unfolds.

Friday was an awesome regular day, however both the sunrise and sunset were worthy of pictures and had a nice way of book-ending a normal day.

Sunrise the start of a new day.

Sunset the end of a normal day and a busy week

Saturday was a busy day of moving sheep, some sorting had to be done and four ewe lambs were sold to a client that needed to be delivered. Larry the ram was going to accompany them for a visit to their new home. Larry didn't think he wanted to go with them so we had a little set too! A few nicks and a pair of glasses later, Larry was successfully loaded on the trailer.

Later in the day I would also trip when running through a sheep pen and do a full on face plant in the muck. I don't think I was smiling as much after that, however it wasn't worthy of a picture so didn't take one.

Sunday after an amazing mtg and "Potluck" lunch I went to work helping pack some wool sacks with fleeces for shipping this week. Then I cleaned and prepped the barn for some new tenants. 

This makes a difficult job a whole lot easier.

This was the barn when I started (Had some ongoing residents for about a month)

All cleaned up ready for some tweaking and the new tenants can move in.

My mom has spent several weeks in Alberta this fall, she was helping us get our house in town ready for renting and also a few projects at the Sheep Ranch to make the small Cabin there feel a little more like home. We so appreciated all she did and the time she spent. One of the highlights of her visit was the three weeks she and Kelsey spent together at the Riding Academy where Kelsey works and trains.

She insisted that she wanted a family picture before she left, so last evening we all were clothed and in our right minds and having corralled the cat and the dog we managed to get a picture as follows.

Once again, downloading plans and while this is going on decided I would post a small update. I was at my second Grand Opening of a Divine showroom yesterday. The first was slightly after I joined the company 9 ¾, years ago. Last night was very spectacular as we launched what promises to be a new way of selling flooring. One client as they walked through the space said, “This feels and looks like an Art Gallery not a Flooring Store!”

The food and beverage for the Grand Opening was provided by CRAFT.

 It was very good, very nicely presented and if I had been at all on the ball I would have recorded what each one was. The standout of the evening was the Rack of Lamb pictured above as of course seeing this caught my attention due to the past few months living on the sheep ranch.

The showroom has several vignettes of several "life styles" which are to be used to select and direct people to the products we sell that fit this description. Below are some shots of vignettes to give an illustration of what we are talking about.

You can then narrow down your choices and quickly find what goes together.

Then further into the showroom the actual samples are cataloged and stored so that large sections can be viewed and selected from.

So there you have it a very abridged version of our new showroom. Please contact me for your own personal tour.

Life has been a blur to say the least… as you are aware if you are reading this, we undertook a move to a Sheep Ranch earlier this year. This has unfolded in a huge learning curve and interesting adventures that continue. I have been remiss in that I haven’t updated this in forever; however working on tenders at my desk today so maybe will post some pictures of various activities up until today!

Lets go a little back in time:

It was down right hot outside:

Time to shear sheep... a new experience and the following pictures better tell the story than my feeble typing.

This then was followed by some cleaning duties as we scrambled to get the barn cleaned before the snow arrived.

I will not post all the before and after pictures but here are a couple that help you understand why I counted this cleaning as my workout!

Before (Note it was almost to the top rail)

After... clean as can be ready for a new tenant

Soon a bobcat arrived onsite and this was then used to address the corrals and feedlots. This was surprisingly hard work as things were relatively firmly packed and took a fair bit of digging to get it loose.

The following are some sunrise pictures taken over the past months...we get some very stunning morning pictures on our way to work.

The next adventure was the process of artificially impregnating some sheep to introduce new bloodlines to the flock. This was interesting and its interesting to note that the vet who did this is flown all over the world to do the procedure that took place right on the ranch.