A Time to Prepare

Last week, I was somewhat MIA from My Stable Life. I hope not to do that again for a while but with New Years Eve and the post-Christmas holiday, we here at J. Drummond Farms found ourselves immersed in a busy week! Nothing like starting a new year off right with goals, ambitions and the drive to get things done.

These days, I'm doing a lot of reading – as you can see from my pile of books above. Obviously, these paperbacks don't have much to do with raising horses. However since I know very little about raising human babies, I'm trying to figure out of any of my mare and foal care knowledge can cross over and pertain to the next chapter in my life.

These books are telling me No.

And each day, it appears that I'm driving my family even crazier with random facts and information about multiple human babies.

\”Clay, did you know that Canadian twin births have spiked 30% over the years from 1970 to 1995?\” I said one morning.

To which my husband replied, \”Yes, I did.\”

\”Oh… Wow. How did you know that?\” Secretly, I was somewhat dismayed that my husband knew more on the subject than I did. After all, I've been reading a lot of books…!

\”You told me yesterday,\” he chuckled.

Well that explains it. But geez, my short term memory certainly isn't quite what it used to be…

Since my parents were in Canada visiting for Christmas (they currently are in the process of moving from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Warrington in the United Kingdom), they set some time aside to come out to Regina last week and help Clay and I reorganize our house in preparation for the future. (As a sidenote, I have two mothers and two fathers, just in case you were wondering).

My Mom helped me focus on my closet, which was in serious need of damage control. Dad built me an additional sturdy shelf – thereby creating more usable space – and an \”intervention\” for my clothing habit began.

It was hard. I won't lie. I love clothes. Like, I REALLY love clothes… And I couldn't understand why I was having trouble fitting my maternity wardrobe into the walk-in that Clay totally gave up for me. (He has a separate armoire and dresser for his clothes ). So Mom helped me go through my wardrobe with heartfelt scrutiny and low and behold, we were able to pack up 8 garbage bags full of clothing for Goodwill.

Okay, I admit some of those donation bags were Clay's old shirts and stuff that he didn't wear anymore… But hey, it meant that he opened up a couple more of his drawers for my maternity clothing!!

Here is my Dad strategizing a blue-print to hang a giant mirror:

He was not super impressed when I brought out my camera.

Clay, my dad and my brother Dave also spent some time hanging more shelves and new cabinets to clear up cluttered counter space:

And a great deal of time was spent moving furniture, organizing things and painting what was originally our guest room. I supervised. And altogether the room was transformed from this:

To this:

We still have a bit of work to do, but Clay and I have time. And all the big jobs were taken care of last week.

Last week was a busy time for us additionally because as the revamping was taking place inside of our house, Clay was also busy outside in the barn. With the help of our friends Corey and Lacey, the yearlings were brought into the arena and round-penned.

Then they were saddled for the first time and eventually, Corey began to put his foot in the stirrup and mount each of the two yearlings fillies and two colts for the first time in their lives.

I'm happy to report that each of the yearlings' progress is coming along nicely!

And this has really nothing to do with anything – I just think they're cute…

Also last week, Clay and Lacey sorted all of the weanlings and separated the girls from the boys:

But that I'll tell you more about that tomorrow.  Because I think weanlings are pretty cute too!

– JW