The ~)(urleys~: Our Anniversary Events

With not a whole lot of money that we would want to spend on our anniversary and the fact that this could be the last time I ride my horse (since she has technically been sold) Jim and I both combined and made our own plans. He took Friday off of work, I thought was extremely thoughtful. We loaded up the horses and went to one of my favorite places to ride, the lake bottom by rabbit island. He packed a lunch and off we went. I love this place because it has a mostly shallow stream and my horse LOVES the water. Jim has more and better pictures and even some video but he has been too busy to let me transfer them on the computer so there will be more later. We sat by the old look out tower and had a nice lunch and just talked. It was really amazing, we couldn't have asked for better weather. Because the lake is low and the bottom is fairly flat Jim and I raced (since my horse is a race horse) Kayak won, but as soon as Hazel heard him coming she kicked into gear and wow she was fast.

See the spread he made, it was so yummy!

This was one of my favorite parts of the day. He went onto this hill and wrote in the dirt J+D=Love forever. It's hard to see because it slid on the hill but it was still sweet.

This is the beginning of the stream. After Hazel splashed and soaked both of us pawing and splashing in the water. It was so cute we didn't want to stop her. Jim has a cute video of it.

This was Jim hiking up to write his love for me in the dirt. AAAWWWHHH

One of the highlights/scariest part of the day was when we came up to a very large "pond" around the edges you could see the bottom so I figured it wasn't too deep. Jim too the other way around and Hazel and I thought we would cut through, little did either one of us know her hooves would sink and that it got super deep. My horse is HUGE and we had water up to my saddle. Her butt was under water, my boots were FULL of water. He back fee started sinking so she would rear up and try bend her back legs and try to lunge from the deep water. She was starting to panic, Jim was starting to panic but was still a long ways away. I wasn't panicking yet. It did cross my mind to jump off (I'm a good swimmer) hold on to the horn or get out and help pull her out. But luckily right at that point she got us out. We were both soaked, my saddle was soaked and as I said my boots were completely FULL of water. We had a great laugh and I took her back into the water and she didn't seem to mind. Good horse. And a good experience for me.

So it was my turn to plan the evening. I knew we would be busy all day Friday so I did a lot of preparing on Thursday. I made home made manacotti (Jim's favorite) a home made NY style baked cheese cake that turned out perfect. Salad, and garlic bread, oh and artichoke dip. Jimi, and Tori helped set up to make it look like a restaurant which will their reward will be posted later. But it looked amazing. We had a great day and a great night and both Jim and I agree it was one of the very best anniversary celebrations we ever had.