I didn't forget I just needed to rest.

Thank you for your patience while I was away. We just finished up a load of laundry and are sitting on the couch getting ready to crash for the night. We are getting up at 2:30am to run to Orlando airport in the morning then heading straight to the barn to keep working on H&W Stables. Everywhere I have read or anyone I have spoken to has said that anything worth having is worth working for. Well, we are busting our butts to get this stable up to the standards we are looking for. The barn was in good shape before we obtained it but we are just doing deferred maintenance and making some adjustments on other parts of it. It is Saturday night and I have not written on Thursday or Friday. It was not that I didn’t want to write or have anything to write about it was just that I needed to get caught up on some rest. Thursday was spent putting on new locks, more pruning, pressure washing, scraping and prepping the walls for the new paneling, and removing the front stall windows for the new paneling. The work on this day was not mind numbing just tedious and man do I appreciate people who do this for a living. Oh yeah, we got our barn cat this day as well. His name is Luke, came from the SPCA, and at the moment he is a tad bit antisocial. He has stuck around so far but he hasn’t killed any critters yet so we are still having to feed him. Just kidding, we will feed him anyways. Friday we got the office all set up which was a nice touch. It is pretty cool to have an air-conditioned office to eat in, work out of and just sit and chill for a bit. We also moved some dirt from around the stables, got the pastured fertilized, weeded the arena and round pen, and odds and ends that took up a great portion of the day. Today was a big day on the progress of the stables. Ken and I put up all the paneling on the front of the barn. One window has been cut out, the bathroom is up and running again, the out buildings have been scrubbed and are ready for paint, and we have a few less spiders and wasps. The pest situation is funny in itself. We have all become a little less crept out by the creepy crawlies and flying critters. When you see spiders the size of your palm on a daily basis you begin to become immune to them. Even Brianna isn’t as jumpy as she has been. The wasps nests are being eradicated one by one and some of these bugs have been working very hard for a long time to build their castles. The funniest moment of the day was with Michelle and Ruthie working in the pump house. There is a rat living in the pump house and he introduced himself to them multiple times throughout the day. They hung tough and our silly cat has yet to find it interesting enough to battle it out with the rat so they have insisted we kill the rat. The best part was that Michelle kept sneaking up on her mother and touching her lightly to make her freak. You could hear the shrieking over the hammering every time. You need that levity while working that hard. The place is going to be beautiful when it’s complete and we will all be very glad when we can sit on those rocking benches, drink a big glass of sweet tea, and watch people enjoying their horses. Well, Michelle has passed out here on the couch and I guess I should head to bed since my alarm is going to go off in less than 3 and ½ hours. We are shutting down early tomorrow so we can regroup for next week so I’ll post some pictures of some of the construction. It is pretty cool to see the before and I cannot wait to see the after. Work hard for what you want and don’t be afraid to sweat for it.