New Year's

Matthew and I spent New Year's in Florida with Matthew's family.  We took Rabi and Mow with us and stayed in our horse trailer.

 

Our camping spot.

 

All of Matthew's sisters and all of our nieces and nephews were also visiting.  This was the first time we've met Emily and Miran's son Henry!

 

The guys.

 

 

Matthew brought his drone to fly around Max and Janet's place.

 

We spent most of our time playing games, lots of games!  Here Matthew is entertaining the four older kids with a modified game of Pandemic.

 

We rang in 2017 a little early so that the kids could celebrate with us, then we all went to bed, haha.

Spice

Today we said goodbye to our sweet little mini, Spice.  He will be dearly missed.

Christmas

My parents came to visit this year for Christmas.  Mom and I got in a lot of riding while Matthew and Dad did some golfing.

 

 

Mom and I dressed up in holiday hats and decorations for a ride and drive around the neighborhood.

 

The stockings hung by the chimney with care, complete with my parents' cat Casper.

 

The decorated tree and gifts.

 

A special gift, one of our foster kittens!  Stormy and Gale were adopted shortly after Christmas.

 

Mom and I distributing gifts.

 

Family photo, this time with our foster Gale.

Fancy Dancing

We finally busted out Matthew's birthday present and got all dressed up for some fancy ballroom dances the last two weekends.  First, we went to Hilton Head Island for a Plantation Dance.

 

Last weekend we got all dressed up again for a dance at the Elk's Lodge near our old house.  This time I wore red in true holiday spirit!

Making Soap

After about a year of planning on making my own soap, I finally did!  It wasn't as hard as I thought once I came up with a recipe using some online help.  First, all of the ingredients were measured by weight.  Then I combined the lye with the water and heated the oils to match the temperature of the lye water.

 

I used an immersion blender to blend the oils with the lye water and lined a loaf pan with butcher paper as a mold.

 

Mixed and poured! (notice the gloves and glasses for safety)

 

After 24 hours I unmolded the soap and sliced it into bars.

 

I've made three successful batches of soap so far: one unscented, one lemongrass, and one laundry bar.  I can't wait to use them! (Soap has to cure for 4-6 weeks)

Bridge Run

This past weekend we participated in the Savannah Bridge Run for the third year in a row.  We had to leave the house early and were able to watch the sunrise on the way to the start.

 

Before the run.  I wore my Tabby Tales Rescue shirt to support the new cat rescue.

Ranch Work

Lazy G Ranch has been living up to its name for a while but we finally got a little work done the last two weekends.  We installed some hooks on the garden shed to help tidy my fencing pieces that are used as trellises in the vegetable garden.

 

 

And we set LOTS of posts.  Here I am digging holes for a gate.

 

The gate. This allows us to drive through the minis pen into the horse pasture.

 

The last gate was also for the mini pen.  It will also open up to allow us to drive into the horse pasture but for right now we are using it to split the mini pen in half.  My older mini, Spice, hasn't been doing well so he needs to be on a special diet and remain separate from Peanut.

 

The rest of the fence posts were set for another section of horse pasture fence.

 

Once all of the posts were set we rolled out the fence and used our fence stretcher to pull it tight.

 

 

Standing up the fence.

 

Finished fence!  Now 3/4ths of the pasture is permanent fencing.  We hope to finish the last quarter this winter.

 

In other news, we recently had to purchase a new garden tractor because our other one had a serious engine failure.  We wanted a john deere and the one we found on craigslist even came with some spiffy flames.  I'll be mowing the grass on a hot rod now!

 

Finally, we had a fox move into the den that a gopher tortoise dug a couple of years ago.  The tortoise had been gone awhile and I had filled in the hole, but the fox decided that he wanted to live there I guess.