the Life of Olena

My definition of "pretty dirty" xoxo  she steals my heart with that smile.  

It is surely not my intention to go so long before posting but our life's path has taken us off roadin' a bit so I haven't had much time or energy to blog.  Now hopefully I can bring you up to date without making a novel of it... The biggest change is that I am now working full time.  Yes we are still homeschooling, and Yes I have no idea how I do it or survive it.  My typical day looks like this... 4:45a the alarm goes off 5:30a I leave the house at work by 6:00a off at 2:00 and home around 2:30p We have "lunch/dinner" as a family and J leaves for work shortly after Olena and I work on school stuff from about 4:30-6:30p We have a light dinner together. She plays, I do my chores. She showers and goes to bed by 8:00 I get stuff ready for the next day and I am in bed around 9:30. In addition to this I am "oncall" for work every night at 5p...all night through the next day so while doing all this running I am constantly taking phone calls (eve...

This is one of Olena's favorite horses, and one of only 2 mares that they have at Banbury. She is a beautiful horse...but a tad sassy! LOL

Amira  

Just a handful of her friends at Banbury.  She loves everyone there and they all equally adore her.  The girl with the ball cap and really long hair is Amber, she is one of Olena's instructors and she is AMAZING!! we love her and she brings out a lot of Olena's talents and abilities.  We are highly considering having Amber instruct her in private lessons next year.

  Showing off her riding skills.  She demonstrated 3 various styles of trotting... Posting is to rise out of the saddle seat for every other stride of the horse's forelegs, thus smoothing out the jolts you will encounter if you just sit. This makes riding the trot much more comfortable for you and your horse. Two Point   to lift your bottom out of the saddle, tense but don't grip tightly with your upper legs and stand slightly in the stirrups. Then you have to try to control the stance with your muscles, rather than by putting all your weight in the stirrups. lastly, sitting trot which is nothing more than staying in the saddle while riding, but moving your body with the horse. And to my amazement she did this all on a horse that she had never ridden before.  This just blows me away because to be able to perform as well as she did on a horse that was much wider than any other horse she ever rode, she didn't know his personality and vise versa, and it was a sad...