Free Range Mama

new baby!

Big excitement this past week as Z’s best friend’s horse had her long awaited foal. The horse, Rose, was a rescue horse purchased at auction 11 months ago, so the pregnancy was a surprise and a bit of a mystery.

Her foal turned out to be a boy, and a beautiful brown and white paint horse. Here he is just a few hours after he was born (November 4):

Sorry, the blanket covers up his gorgeous markings. Rose is a very good mama – very protective and attentive to her baby.

 

Here he is a few days later out in the pasture..

He’s a very rambunctious little guy – already giving his mom all kinds of worry. He takes off like a shot across the pasture on those wobbly legs and Rose is right on his heels trying to keep up with him. 

z is 9

In honor of her birthday, the kids had their friends over for a sleepover on Saturday night, had pancakes with presents in the morning (starting at 6am!), and then they all went to see the 3D Puss n’ Boots movie.

Instead of a cake, Z opted for homemade “dirt” cupcakes, a house specialty.

For dinner we went to her favorite Mexican restaurant so that she could have the birthday song in Spanish with the sombrero.

fencing tournament

We spent most of Saturday at Alex's fencing tournament. This was his second ever tournament and his first since he switched to a new weapon (epee) a couple of months ago.

He was a bit younger (age 11 fencing Y14) and less experienced on epee than the other competitors, so he definitely went into it with the attitude that this was a learning experience and he probably wasn't going to win any medals. There are only so many epeeists in the world, so it is always a valuable learning opportunity when you can fence a few that you haven't fenced before.

Sure enough, he didn't win any of his bouts, but he actually did a lot better than we expected in terms of the number of touches he scored. He got touches in every bout, some were quite close, and really held his own against his opponents.

Maybe it helped that his expectations were low, but I was really happy to see that he stayed on top of them mental part of the game - not getting upset or frustrated, just staying focused and  putting his best effort out on the strip each time. He had fun, and really seemed to enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to fence people with different styles and strengths.