Not my mother; she's excellent.

I just failed the kids a couple times this weekend.

Night riding!

First off, rode the Kid on Friday for about ten minutes, bareback.  He had a few spooks, one of which was really, really hard.  Like, I slammed into him.  I got up immediately the next day and headed to the barn.  Remember, my goal was three hours in the saddle.  I ended up with just shy of 90 minutes riding on Saturday.  The first hour, he was an idiot.  The last half hour, I felt like I had my horse back.  It was lots of trotting and downward transitions and three trot poles stacked in a pyramid that we went over no less than a million times.  Trotting, walking, snailing.  We would walk over it, go about twenty fifteen and turn back around.  I alternated the direction of the turn and the type of turn: turn bending in, bending out or on haunches (I haven't quite mastered asking for the turn on the forehand).

And at the end of it, he was bleeding.

I'm not sure what happened, but whatever it was, it happened to both insides of this back ankles.  I've got ankle boots, but I haven't used them in awhile because I didn't think we were doing enough work or enough technical work to warrant it.


I have to give the kid props, though, because he held his ouchie ankles up like a champ.

After all of that, I was able to go get the massive amounts of Christmas shopping, eggnog drinking and tree buying done.  Also:  cupcake eating, Jazz'd visiting and kitten playing.  And!  I found a local place that will print my custom-designed holiday cards (for a reasonable $27 for 30 cards!).

Not bad, right?!

Sunday, towards the end of the day, I went back out to ride Archie.  I wasn't sure if he would be tender or anything, but there was no heat and no inclination of pain.  So I rode.  I wanted to keep it short and somewhat intense.  So, we did some trot work and then I asked him to start cantering the pyramid poles.  I thought he would remember how to do this, but I only got the canter once before the poles.  And, man, he gets so grumpy tracking right.  I spent about two and a half hours in the saddle from Friday to Sunday.

Happy Kid