Memorial Day weekend we drove out to Idaho to visit my parents on their ranch. It was the best weekend to go, since they had a big day planned for Saturday. We got to drive cattle up the canyons into the mountain pastures for summer grazing. It was a perfect day, the scenery was gorgeous, and the horses were careful with us. This picture is of me and our daughter Madie, riding my sister's horse Lazaroni. She is a four year old Quarter Horse, and my sister has done a really nice job of training her. We drove about a hundred head of cows and calves up a dirt road. There were streams alongside the road, and the cows and horses could stop and drink from time to time. The terrain there is really rough and rocky...the sagebrush grows as high as the horses' backs in some places, and it is scratchy and thick to try to ride through. The horses do really well walking and even running through the rocks and sagebrush...they all wear shoes to protect their feet in that kind of country. We only got to stay for a few days, but it was a really nice vacation.

Here is my horse, a registered Quarter Horse mare named Daisy. (Her registered name is Poco Blackburn Madie, but we named our daughter Madeline and shortened it to Madie, so the horse had to adopt a different name.)
Daisy is as gentle as a dog, but really hasn't been ridden very much. I bought her from a neighbor, and she has always been gentle and easy to handle, but sometimes she doesn't want to be ridden. She bucked me off one time, right in front of my mother-in-law. I'm going to continue to train her...she has a lot of potential and I just need to spend more time with her.

Here I am with a wide open notebook....I can say anything I want to say. When I was a little kid, I always loved having a new notebook or just a clean sheet of paper in front of me. I am an artist, a poet, a writer, a dreamer... I've been that way all of my life. Only now, I find that there isn't time for me to sit, think, compose, dream, or even concentrate. I've got a toddler in the house.

But she's sleeping now, and I'm staying up late starting my own blog. It's something I've wanted to do for several years and just haven't gotten to it. Every day is filled to the fullest. I am supremely happy with life, and I keep busy enough at it that I don't notice some things that fall by the wayside. One of those fallen things is having a wide open space to think in, dream in, write in, and own. It's a little daisy petal I'm stooping to pick up today. My own blog...I like it.