Traditions

The holidays are officially in full swing which means holiday traditions new and old are popping up all over the place. For years my family has been decorating gingerbread houses together, it has become quite the ordeal complete with the houses being displayed at family Christmas and having guests guess which house belongs to each family member. Most of my favorite holiday memories actually stem from the gingerbread house traditions...along with some of the most hilarious. Mike and I decided to continue the gingerbread house tradition down here in Georgia. First of all, hats off to my mother for building those darn houses out of graham crackers every year! One day I hope to be as creative and crafty as my mother, as things stand now my poor children will have plenty of "Mom tried..." stories to tell. So the first hurdle of gingerbread houses was the underestimation of how difficult the construction would be, especially since graham crackers are now sold in itty bitty little squares that need to be frosted together to create walls of any significance. So on night one the houses were finally put together and left to "set up." The next night we ventured into decorating and made a rookie mistake...not enough icing for full decorations! Candy options were a tad scarce as well, not having leftover trick or treat candy certainly makes a difference. So night 2 ended with the decorating of the roofs. Our poor little half decorated houses have been sitting on the breakfast bar waiting for the crazy week to be over...looks like tomorrow will be the final building day. Pictures to follow!
Sunday will also be an exciting day as Mom and Dad are coming to visit for the day! I am so excited to see them and have them see our new life in Georgia!

Happy Turkey and Redskins day!

This past week hasn't been the easiest week by far. My emotions have been up, down and all overboard mostly as a result of homesickness during the holidays. The onslaught of Christmas music hasn't helped much nor did hearing everyone's travel plans around campus. But I am one very lucky girl, I have Mike and some amazing friends that have shouldered my emotions for me. Every time I feel a break down coming on I know I can pick up the phone and have a supportive, understanding, listening ear on the other end ( thank you Gray and Katie, you two are awesome!). And when I get home at the end of a long day and fighting back tears Mike is always there with open arms. I can't even begin to explain how thankful and blessed I am to be engaged to such an amazing man; never once has he faltered in supporting our decision to move to Georgia and never once has he done anything but strive to make this new place our home. I love you with all my heart Mike!
Onto happier notes. Last night I had a lovely blonde cooking moment...not surprising at all. While making pumpkin dip (a new favorite of Mike and I's...thank you pinterest) I was merrily mixing all of my ingredients when I realized I had dumped in cook and serve pudding mix instead of instant pudding mix. At first I figured no big deal, ha! Certainly not the same outcome at all! Thankfully our Thanksgiving meal today went much more smoothly. Mike made the turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits while I was in charge of the cranberries and stuffing. Everything was delicious and now we have Thanksgiving leftovers to last until Christmas, hahaha! After an early dinner we headed off to the barn to do evening chores, again Mike is awesome as he came and helped do turnout and stalls. Somehow no holiday seems complete anymore without a pony kiss from Spence or Lou pony. Now we are settled back into the apartment with a new batch of pumpkin dip setting up in the fridge and the Redskins on tv. Georgia is starting to slowly feel a little like home.

Hoping everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Remember to take time to be thankful for all of your blessings today:)

Southern horse problems

I can't believe how fast time is flying by, its already Thanksgiving week and its been a week since I last updated! Let's see last week ended with trying out possible donation horses and a horse show at Georgia Southern. After jumping around the trial horses I believe its safe to say that this dressage queen is back in the hunter ring for the time being...no worries though Spence will still be my dressage pony, no way we're doing the hunters! The Georgia Southern western show went well on Sunday with all of our riders taking home ribbons as well as our two horses, Jack and Poco, being absolute champs all day. However, after a weekend of riding western for warm ups and coaching I was happy to be back in my hunt seat saddle on Monday.
The rest of the week was a tad up and down with work stress and pony stress. Apparently Lou has decided that retirement just isn't for him so instead he jumped out of his stall, crushing a 4 foot gate in the process. No need to worry though he came through with barely a scratch and has been happily cantering around the field with no problems. On a good note, Lou had his first appointment with his new farrier and he's sound (well sound for Lou) which is awesome! Usually it takes farriers a little bit to figure him out and for both to get into the swing of things with each other. The time change has made working Spence a tad bit difficult, there are many monsters hiding in the shadows of the arena! I still can't quite get used to not having an indoor...I may have been a bit spoiled back up north. In fact only one college in our region has a covered ring, I guess southerners don't ride in the rain or cold?
A nice perk of living in the south, particularly Georgia, is that Corey Smith is from here. So Mike and I got to go see him on Wednesday evening at the Macon Auditorium...a very nice happy middle of the week perk:) Aside from Corey Smith, it is awesome that there is always sweet tea, shrimp and grits are on menus everywhere and topic of conversation over dinner with the team often comes back to college football. Gotta love it!

Stress reduction...the start at least

So I have officially passed the two week point at work and have settled into the routine of everything so far. I have also become an approved driver for the college...scariest driving test ever! Driving around a brand new town in a bus with a police officer judging your every move so that you can keep your job pretty much, yea just a tad bit intimidating. After a few pokes at my slow driving I passed which means I get to drive the Western Team to Georgia Southern University next weekend for their first show...yay 3 hours in the bus! I feel like I've really started to connect with some of my students recently and on a particularly windy day this past week I got the opportunity to teach a ground lesson about tack to two of my foreign exchange students and at the end of the discussion they taught me a little about the cultures of their home countries (Singapore and Shanghai). Wesleyan may be an extremely small college but it really does open so many doors to its students to be able to experience many different cultures within the campus.
Mike and I have also begun to adjust to the more southern ways of life, where armadillos are the equivalent to groundhogs and baggers at the grocery store carry your bags to your car. Just the other day at the local Publix (grocery store) the cashier and bagger struck up a conversation with me about being from Maryland and welcomed me to Macon, then the very friendly bagger walked me out to my car while toting my bags along. Poor Mike also had his first run in with a barbed wire fence while working on a cattle ranch. Tomorrow Lou pony also gets to move just a bit further south as he travels from the McCurdy's farm to the Bunn farm in Forsyth so that he will just be 30 minutes away from us. The wonderful Athena just happens to be making a trip to Georgia so she will be picking him up tomorrow afternoon...gotta love when timing works out perfectly!
In other news we are so happy to report that all of our family and friends made it through Hurricane Sandy safely. We continue to keep everyone on the coast in our thoughts and prayers as they begin to rebuild, especially on the Jersey Shore where everything has been completely rearranged. If there is anyway we can be of assistance to anyone please let us know!

On the way to work today this was the scene at the Starbucks...hmmmm.