Yellow Cards, Baby Mommas and Tree Bowling.

I'm coming home!! Well for a month at least, 13 Dec to 12 Jan. Very exciting, and very soon!

So what have I been up to lately? Well since we got back from England its been very busy on the competition front with the Europeans, Boekelo and Pau.

We went to the Europeans in Fontainebleau directly from England and had another lorry meet us there to pick the other horses and a mountain of feed and rugs and tack etc etc etc... just as we arrived the organisers decided to water the clayey / sandy parking area, making a great muddy mess and

making unloading / loading the everything great fun! The team did great (although Mossy was a complete bitch!) they ended up with the silver medal. Very good indeed.

On the Friday there was a cocktail party that Susy decided she was going to drag me along to, ok then, so we get all dressed up and rock on up to the tent and everyones dressed in jods and jeans and just plain old scruffy. Thanks Suz! Luckily it was free wine so we got over our embarrassment fairly quickly. That did however mean we were playing bowling with those round ornamental trees and deciding Bryn and Stefano needed plastic grass chest hair... After

that it was the whole Italian team back to our lorry for pasta, so including all the hangers on etc etc there was 22 eating in our lorry! Ok our lorry is huge but c'mon!

So Mossy was really horrible on the cross, she ended up getting the big E in the last water (3 from home), for some reason however Susy kept going and finished so she got yellow carded... more on that later...

We were back home for less than a week before leaving for Boekelo with Caro, she was a star! Its amazing what a change of bit can do! Even got a qualifying score, no more exceptions for us! Of course Boekelo was a ton of fun (how can an event sponsored by beer not be!). I made best friends with Peter the man at the coffee stand as he asked me to move the lorry 5 meters backwards after we had parked so he could have his machine at the entrance to the stables. No drama I said, he was shocked and I couldn't walk past him for the rest of the week without him trying to feed me something! Very convenient as I couldn't actually get to the lorry without going past him! Giuseppe Della Chiesa (the TD) seemed to spend a lot of time in our lorry eating all our food (including Mrs Ps home made spaghetti bolognese) on one particular evening he was somewhat tipsy and basically emptied out the fridge... lucky I had Peter to fall back on!

Then again we were home for less than a week before leaving for Pau with Mossy and Ava. My two little dressage stars, Mo 3rd and Ava 6th! Super Ava of course jumped clear with 2 SJ rails and finished 9th. Mossy however despite jumping amazingly starish decided ¾ of the way round that she was done and got eliminated again. Susy pulled her round and jumped the last one that she stopped at before walking home... yep, another yellow card! and a 2month ban LOL. Good thing it was the last comp of the season and the ponys are on holidays now anyway. But it did cause a bit of drama, including a rant by Mark Phillips in his Horse and Hound column.

Today our first baby Momma arrived. Next year Susy wants embryo transfer foals from all her horses. Very exciting!!

The 2009 season so far

They say a picture says a thousand words and as I've been missing about ten thousand this year I decided I needed a fair few pics to bring you up to date...

Vairano was quite a competition, Susy won all the classes (CIC**, CIC*** and CCI***) which was quite special. Everyone I've talked to cant remember anyone else having done something like that. The pony's were all amazing and on their best behavior and I also won the grooms prize - Yay! :-)

Ava went up to Badminton (that's us grazing in front of the house), she was super just a bit of a shame about the XC time faults. I was also helping Robbie (Italian that came 4th) he did so awesome! Was a party on the way home I tell ya! I met up with Mum and Ky while I was there so good to see some familiar faces, did some shopping too – yay new boots!!

The next big event was the 4*in Luhmuhlen. It was Mossys first 4* and she was amazing! Just one run out XC which really was Susys fault (she fell off in the same water last year) but popped straight in the next time. It was quite a tough course, she was the only one to finish for about the first 20 starters or something stupid. So lots of carrots for Mo Mo ;-).

Coming up is the dressage Europeans next week followed by a one day then leaving for Burghley that night then straight back to Italy for a comp in Rome before the eventing Europeans in France. Barely enough time to catch my breath!!