The Holidays- such as they were....

*** Apparently this already posted, but I didn't notice. Oops.  Slightly enhanced version with pics now... ***

I love the holidays.  love them.  I've always loved them.  They haven't always been perfect or stress free but I absolute adore (modestly) decorating the house and spending evening after evening with traveling family and friends with good wine, lots of cheese and plenty of fires in the fireplace.

That being said, our annual parade of family feasts and parties was (rudely) interrupted this year by whatever hellish one day flu seems to be swirling around Seattle with a vengeance.  Almost every friend of my reported at least one family member being taken down with a charmingly violent illness, and in our household we were lucky enough to have two!  (me and The Boy).  Charming.

My flu hit just in time to totally miss our annual ravioli feast with his family... while his delayed was a day and managed to land squarely on Christmas.  Oops.  I felt moderately bad about infecting him, and even worse that my favorite few days of lazying around the house together were not quite as enjoyable as they usually are..

On top of that the damned sickness totally screwed with my carefully planned schedule that allowed for several holiday visits to the ponies with carrots and bran mashes galore.

As it stands the mares were unceremoniously given their gifts three days late and and the barn staff didn't get their cards/tips until the New Year...

Misty P2 waiting for Santa

 The illness also robbed me of any photos of the events.  None of our family, none of hilarious holiday cooking time.  No holiday pictures of the mares... nothing.

Oh well.
I'll just leave it at the fact that Pia got a pretty new sparkly brow band and Prairie got a brand new Happy Mouth Pelham and new curb reins (since I ripped the stitching out of my old curb reins with a soft tug...). 
sexy eh?

ohhhh sparkles

tasty pelham and new reins

The gifts belie the girls' general obedience.  If anything, right now Pia deserves the "new bit" for her recent objections to outside leg (again) and Prairie has been a fabulous gem who deserves gold stars and stickers.

Bah Humbug.

Yesterday, I hauled Prairie out for another lesson down at Brass Ring.  I was a tad skeptical as to how it would go given two days off in a row and crisp, scoot inducing temperatures but she was beyond exceptional.  A recap of that outing to come....