Transplanted in Texas

My best friend is getting married very soon. So I have been thinking over my own romance, how things have changed since my beloved and I fell in love and married. And how our lives have developed since she and I met. She is nearly 4 years older than I (and four months older than my hubby!), but Kmarie was the one that I turned to when life was driving me crazy - before and even during my courtship with my sweetheart. By the time D proposed, I had switched over to confiding in him, as it should be, but still Kmarie and I have enjoyed conversing and swapping stories. She was my maid of honor, and there is still no one I would rather have taking that place. We met on an April day in 2009, and immediately I felt comfortable just walking up and introducing myself -- never have I felt that with anyone else. I'm a shy person, in case you didn't know. She was fourteen; I was eleven. We were both homeschooled, horse-crazy girls with temperamental mares. The friendship took o...

With the Triple Crown season in the U.S. now at an end, I thought I would make a post about the impact A.P. Indy has had on the Crown. A great-great-grandson won the Triple Crown this year, becoming only the 13th horse to win it in 100 years. A.P. Indy, a 1989-foaled son of Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, was out of a winning daughter of the famous Triple Crown winner Secretariat. In turn, he was an early betting favorite for the Kentucky Derby of 1992, reflecting his superb racing record at two and three, but had to scratch due to injury shortly before the race. The injury had him miss the Preakness, but he rebounded to win the final leg, the Belmont Stakes. His half-brother, by Storm Bird (who also sired champion sire Storm Cat), won the 1991 Preakness Stakes. The striking bay stallion was retired after a victory in the 1992 Breeders' Cup Classic, and his first foals were born in 1994. He was retired from breeding in spring 2011 after failing to get any of the mares he bred...

We haven't been up to my hometown in a very long time. More than six months. Last year, we visited almost every month, but this year we've been pinching pennies in several ways to make our July 4 debt free goal. And so, we finally will make the trip up this weekend. We are leaving tonight, and we will come home Sunday night. Next week, we will have our debt down from $4100 to at least $500 - hopefully less. And we will have that knocked out in the last week of June. We are excited and setting our eyes to the next step along our way! But that's a story for another day. This weekend, we will be enjoying ourselves, enjoying the mini vacation with my family, and I, personally, will be glad to be away from home for a couple days with several babysitters. Aka siblings. Yance won't enjoy being strapped to his seat for three hours, six hours round trip, but I'm planning on bringing plenty of toys to entertain him. And, hopefully, he will sleep some of the way. I spent...

Well, my biography (of sorts) of the champion stallion A.P. Indy, a Thoroughbred horse who is officially 29 this year, has been edited, the cover redone, and it is on Kindle. And it is also available on MatchBook. MatchBook? Well... according to Amazon.... " Buy the new print book first and then buy the Kindle book for $2.99 or less. (Textbooks available for $9.99 or less.) " https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/ep-landing-page/ref=k_mtchbk_eb_f On Kindle, the book is $7.52.  https://www.amazon.com/P-Indy-Rebecca-Baker-ebook/dp/B079CRB32N/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1512062137&sr=8-1 In paperback, it is $13.86.  https://www.amazon.com/P-Indy-Rebecca-Baker/dp/197610405X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512062137&sr=8-1&keywords=a.p.+indy And buying the two together with MatchBook, it would cost you $16.85, instead of $21.38. Great deal, wouldn't you say? Here is the new cover for the book! Amazon has not completely updated their st...

Two thousand seventeen was a year of ups and downs. It was pretty good in the first half, but it pretty much just went downhill after July was over. Here are the last twelve months. January : I edited "A.P. Indy", D got his license to carry, and I had a couple midwife visits. Read more here . February : We worked on the driveway and house, got a washing machine and dryer, and also I decided that D is awesome . March : I had a birthday, and Yance was born!  Also we had our first anniversary . April : Yance went to his first reenactment, he got a new uncle when his aunt got married , he met Nana and Pop, got to ride a horse for the first time, and I ended up with a bit of PPD while working on Camp NaNoWriMo. May : Our second and final reenactment of the year! And Yance got to meet my grandparents. We traveled a lot , and I did my first feature as an Amazon affiliate. June : It started off terribly. Storms came through and took the power out for five days, and...

There are no words for how much I love this girl. She is second only to my sweet husband, who by the way surpasses everyone and everything, and in some ways we could not be more different. That includes our politics, though in some ways we are similar there, as well. I tend to dress plainly, and although I do not love shooting as much as D, I don't mind it, either. She is more fashionable and extravagant, and less likely to touch a gun, let alone shoot it. But when it comes down to it, we are both introverts, we love horses, and we love Star Wars and Star Trek. Yes, that's possible! She battles depression and anxiety, and this past week has been extremely rough on her for a reason I would rather not say. If I wasn't tied down with a son and a husband who needs me, I would be up there now with her. But she has an amazing best friend of her own and a fantastic boyfriend. In three weeks, my beloved and I will be up in the area to see my family for the final time this y...

My recap of D's birthday and the events surrounding the 2017 Thanksgiving celebrations comes next week. We're on our way to Hico to see more family, as D and his parents have done annually for the past while. Yesterday, Ma's family all gathered at her place to give thanks for all God has given us - each other, homes, good lives, and our friends. 2016 Hico Thanksgiving It was the first Thanksgiving without Caleb. But we were and are thankful for the time we did have with him, and thankful that he is in Heaven. This year we got two little boys to play with, and next year at least one more little one will join in the fun. Yance's very first first  cousin is due early May 2018. In the holiday season, we get to experience everybody's love. We had an overwhelming amount of it twice this year already, what with losing Pop and then Caleb. But this time we were not gathering to mourn. Yesterday we were together to celebrate what freedoms we have. I don't ...

When I see pictures of Thoroughbred yearlings and weanlings in my Twitter feed, I marvel at how large and mature they already are. Dingus, nearing a year and a half in age, is the size of a weanling bred for the track. His three year old sister was ready for training a year ago, at two, not as a yearling like most of the horses I see across the racing world. I'm not knocking the racing industry. Instead, I am simply marveling at the variety in horses. Dingus will be ready physically for backing at two and a half years, in the winter of 2018/2019. I have a year to make sure that he is mentally ready, too. Thoroughbreds are often backed between the ages of one and two, and are already galloping and doing more finesse maneuvers by the time their second birthday rolls around. Some, especially precocious ones with birthdays later in the spring, are nearing their first workouts. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Lippizans often aren't backed until fully mature...

It was the middle of January 2016, almost two years ago. Kmarie lived in Lubbock, starting her first semester at Texas Tech there. And J and I took a trip to go see her. At the time, she was leasing a Thoroughbred ex-racehorse, a tiny mare that was jumped some. The New Mexico-bred was a lovely thing, and to date is the only Thoroughbred I have ridden. This picture was taken of me riding in the arena where horses owned/used by Tech students were boarded. More specifically, it was the indoor arena. Missy, registered as Starrcliff, was foaled April 7, 2006. A dark bay or brown mare, she never won in six starts. Instead, she finished second the second time out, and third in her fifth start. Beyond that, she has a fourth place finish, as well as sixth, seventh, and eighth place finishes. She is by Seacliff, a stallion that swept the 1995 Florida Stallion Stakes series for juvenile colts, and out of G. Starr, a stakes-placed winner by Earth Star. Earth Star, by Deputy Minist...

I laid out the plots for my book and had all of my blog posts prepared so the blog could handle being virtually abandoned for 30 days. And then it hit me. I simply can't do NaNoWriMo this year. I have a house to maintain, a baby to watch and make sure he doesn't hurt himself or anything else, and keep random things out of his mouth. There won't be enough time, between feeding my husband and my son, the horses and holidays, to get fifty thousand words in. And if I don't think I have a chance of winning, I'm not inclined to start something. So NaNoWriMo 2017 is a bust. No, less than a bust. It never began. We'll see about next year. I might have enough time. But November is an awful month for it, because of Thanksgiving. In other news, I am releasing my book, "A.P. Indy", on November 11! It has over 200 pages and will be available on Amazon and CreateSpace, among other places. I can't even write a blog post without the kid climbing u...

I have decided to do a series of posts where I put a picture on here and then describe the feelings, thoughts, and events behind it. I have no idea how long this series will last, so at the end of each post I will do a recap of the previous week and also tell of plans of the future. And post something from Amazon for you to purchase if you want. November 5, 2016. That is when this photo was taken. It was the morning of Breeders' Cup Saturday, and I thought it fitting to play with horses on a Breeders' Cup day. The day had begun with writing, working on the first draft of my A.P. Indy book. I had haltered Sneaky and Sue J, as they were in the arena together at the time, and played a little with each of them. Cookie followed me around, and when I was done I removed the gear from the horses and took pictures of them. Sneaky was curious about the cat, and the kitten was a bit scared and decided to climb up to his "safe space" (Cookie is a wimp). His safe ...

This week was a change from routine. Katharine from L'Art Classique  was here from Sunday night until mid-morning on Wednesday. Yance got passed around a bit on Sunday night, when we went to a going-away fling at a Mexican restaurant in a nearby town for D's second cousin. KitMarie arrived in plenty of time to come to that, and it was awesome. We won't get to see Alli again until the end of September, but working for the season at a dude ranch sounds fun! Even if it isn't being a ranch hand... Fortunately, Katharine sleeps in and loves it. And she loves cats. Because with Midget and Ekta in the house, Sunday night was fun - they were playing tag for a while outside her room at bedtime! Midget and Ekta, enjoying Yance's company Anyway, I didn't make my appearance until about 10am Monday morning. And once Yance was put in his swing, we fetched the beautiful three-year-old palomino tobiano half-Quarter Horse filly owned by my sister-in-law, and put her in...

Here is my final springtime review of my 2016 KeeNov mares and weanling/yearling selections. I have two more reviews coming - in August and November. We already know that General Quarters is in Turkey, Dynamic Sky is at Shannondoe Farm in Ontario, Canada, and that Dads Caps is at Legacy Ranch in California. As for the mares... Madame Giry produced a Jayde, Inc.-bred colt by Honor Code on April 9 in Kentucky. My Conquestadory has a bay filly by Tapit, foaled May 11, that is possibly placed on a nurse mare. My Conquestadory should be heading to Australia for their breeding season shortly. Still no word on where Promise Me Silver is or who she was bred to. She's Not Here is still in America... somewhere. No idea who she was bred to. Burning Arch had a filly by American Pharoah on March 31, bred at Hinkle Farms in Kentucky. Crisp, who is probably in Japan, has not produced an expected American Pharoah foal yet. Favorably produced a colt on March 25 by Honor Code for ow...

Our latest trips have been interesting. For the past three weekends, we've been doing one thing or another, as close as an hour from home or as far as three and a half hours. And it's varied from a family visit to a paying band trip to an expensive hobby. April 21-23: My parents' place to see my grandparents, who hadn't seen me since the wedding last March. April 29-30: Houston, for my husband, his best man, and my father-in-law to play background music as a band at an outdoor Sons of Confederate Veterans supper party at a wealthy gentleman's home. May 5-7: Jefferson reenactment. The highlight of the reenacting season, and our first campout reenactment of the year. I will review them in chronological order. _________________________________________________________________________________ On the evening of April 21, which by the way just happened to be a stressful day for unrelated reasons (o.O), we drove up through testy weather to my parents' ...