Hello!
My apologies on taking such a long time to get up another
post! Somehow last week just disappeared
and as for the weekend.. well I don’t even know where that went!
Last week was bit of a rough week for me.. I got really sick
and was stuck in bed for 2 days with a really bad fever. It’s funny how life works out because grandma
came down midweek with mom and April and made me a big pot of chicken noodle
soup! Nothing can beat grandma’s
soup. And then thank goodness for my mom
and Karen coming out last week to help Jayne and I because she was able to keep
the horses going for me while I was completely out of commission. Finally by Friday I made it back out to the
barn and it felt so good to be back on the horses!!
My good riding friend from back home, Esmee, also arrived on
Friday and we spent the day at the barn with a mutual friend from back home who
is now living in LA, Jess York. We all
meandered back over to the house for the afternoon and all had a lovely dinner
together and just caught up and shared some good laughs! Jess is finishing up school in photography
and took some pictures at the barn so I’m hoping to get some from her and post
some up for you all J
Saturday Es and I did the horse thing again and just enjoyed
spending the day together and catching up!
Then we met up with some friends and all went for a nice dinner and
extremely delicious dessert at PF Chang’s and then to finish up the night we
went go-karting! Sunday was a really
nice day starting with a lovely birthday morning and a brunch and then of
course what do girls do when it’s raining out.. but go shopping!! So we met up with some friends that both Es
and I know that ride in the same area and went and shopped until we dropped.
I dropped Es off early yesterday morning. It was so hard letting her go! But now it’s time to get my head wrapped
around this weekend! It’s show time
again baby!! My class is the largest one
yet with 14 young riders in it and it is going to be competitive alright! I am super excited now that I’ve got my first
CDI down with Rif – no more messing around.
We are bringing it and coming out in full force ;) And as for Stentano
we are going to give it another go alright with those changes and perhaps work
on a little bit more of his listening skills =P
I will keep you facebookers all updated this weekend and
then when I get back I will fill you all in on the weekend :)
Thank you all so much for your support once again and all
the birthday wishes! I am so grateful to
have all of you in my life!
All the best,
Monica
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
A relaxing Sunday.. at last :)
Happy Sunday to you all =)
Well I finally have a day all to myself where I don't need to be doing anything..! I think this is the first in a long time so I thought it might be kind of nice to share some pictures with you all from the show last weekend :)
We have all unwound ourselves from the show last weekend.. but have our eyes set on the next show just 2 weeks away now! There is this balance between unwinding and catching a moment to take a breath but then keeping myself in show mode as well.. it's tricky to keep on that mental game and not let the anxiety of it all get to me but that's what I love... the constant challenge of living in the moment and not getting ahead of myself.
I am really looking forward to this week and weekend to come. Mom, April, and my grandma will be joining dad and I here for a week and a half to spend my birthday next Sunday with me. =) And then Friday Esmee is coming to join us as well (one of my really good riding friends from back home). It will be so nice to take a weekend to reflect back on these past couple months and enjoy all the blessings God has given us.
The horses this week have been a challenge but also so great. It's always a little bit tricky the week after a show because they need some down time but they also have to keep moving and then near the end of this week we picked things back up. Rif thought it might be fun to take advantage of that but Sabine was as always so great and kept us rolling on the right track. Stentano has been trying so hard this week and so I'm continuing to chip away with him and keep it all in persepective! Karen is out this week for a few days as Jayne (another client of karen's from back home) arrived early last week so she will be out to help us both.
I hope that all is well at home and that hopefully Spring will start setting in soon :) As for us.. I think winter finally decided to hit.. we had quite the storm yesterday! Wind, pouring rain, hail, rocks falling down the mountains, flooding, power outages, a very angry ocean .. yes I felt like I was back home!! But then go figure today the sky is clear and the sun is out shining brightly! Go figure.. this crazy Southern Cal weather!
All my love to you back home xoxo
Stentano proudly wore both 2nd (for Rif) and 4th place for the freestyle awards.
Pretty little Champion :)
My superstars and amazing mom!
Getting our smile on for the jog ;)
The Canadian YR force ;)
Yes I love you too handsome ;)
Well I finally have a day all to myself where I don't need to be doing anything..! I think this is the first in a long time so I thought it might be kind of nice to share some pictures with you all from the show last weekend :)
We have all unwound ourselves from the show last weekend.. but have our eyes set on the next show just 2 weeks away now! There is this balance between unwinding and catching a moment to take a breath but then keeping myself in show mode as well.. it's tricky to keep on that mental game and not let the anxiety of it all get to me but that's what I love... the constant challenge of living in the moment and not getting ahead of myself.
I am really looking forward to this week and weekend to come. Mom, April, and my grandma will be joining dad and I here for a week and a half to spend my birthday next Sunday with me. =) And then Friday Esmee is coming to join us as well (one of my really good riding friends from back home). It will be so nice to take a weekend to reflect back on these past couple months and enjoy all the blessings God has given us.
The horses this week have been a challenge but also so great. It's always a little bit tricky the week after a show because they need some down time but they also have to keep moving and then near the end of this week we picked things back up. Rif thought it might be fun to take advantage of that but Sabine was as always so great and kept us rolling on the right track. Stentano has been trying so hard this week and so I'm continuing to chip away with him and keep it all in persepective! Karen is out this week for a few days as Jayne (another client of karen's from back home) arrived early last week so she will be out to help us both.
I hope that all is well at home and that hopefully Spring will start setting in soon :) As for us.. I think winter finally decided to hit.. we had quite the storm yesterday! Wind, pouring rain, hail, rocks falling down the mountains, flooding, power outages, a very angry ocean .. yes I felt like I was back home!! But then go figure today the sky is clear and the sun is out shining brightly! Go figure.. this crazy Southern Cal weather!
All my love to you back home xoxo
Stentano proudly wore both 2nd (for Rif) and 4th place for the freestyle awards.
Pretty little Champion :)
My superstars and amazing mom!
Getting our smile on for the jog ;)
Hey there gorgeous mare mare
The Canadian YR force ;) Yes I love you too handsome ;)Tuesday, March 13, 2012
The Dressage Affaire, Del Mar
Hello to you all!!
I hope everything back at home is going well! I hear the weather is getting cold again :S Thinking about you all and so grateful for the amazing support and encouragement you are all giving me.
As I think a lot of you facebookers have already seen, the show was fantastic! But for those of you not on facebook I shall fill you all in :)
We had beautiful weather and it always brings back good memories being back in the Del Mar area. The first year we made our trip down to SoCal we stayed in Del Mar so it was nice to see so many familiar faces! The show was organized so well and like always was such a pleasure to be a part of! And I also met 2 girls that are competing with me that happen to be literally stabled just down the road from where I am at El Campeon!! So that is pretty sweet!
Wednesday we rolled into the show grounds around 2:00pm after getting stuck in some LA traffic so our 2 hour drive ended up being 3 hours but hey we’re getting used to the crawling 5 lane freeways here so it’s all good ;) Wednesday ended up being quite an exhausting day after getting everything set up and both horses ridden but we kept ourselves laughing and finished the night going out for dinner with the Dodd family, fellow Canadians from back home, so that was so nice to catch up!
Thursday it all started! We had our warm up class which I always like to use to get the nerves out and get back into competition mode. Rif did exactly what I asked for and we won with 68% and Stentano was fairly cooperative and we scored 62%. The jog followed later that afternoon and all was good and we were moved forward to the rest of the show!
Friday was one of those hurry up and wait kinda days as I didn’t ride until around 3 and then close to 5ish so I got on Stentano earlier that day just to loosen him up. We had some tension in our test with Rif as she got quite electric but we stilled managed to get a 67% and took the class and then almost a 61% with Stentano where I believe we ended up placing 6th out of 11 riders. It felt so amazing to go into the awards hearing the Canadian anthem! The prizes were great! Yes prizes.. at a dressage show!! I won a cooler and a gift certificate to one of the show vendors that is now paying for a big chunk of a new Samshield Helmet for of me.. and we’re going with bit of a Canadian theme so I’m super excited!
Saturday was even better for Rif with less tension! A 68% to once again take the class! And Stentano placed 5th (making it into the awards too :)) with a 62%. We had another proud Canadian moment in the awards ceremony listening to the anthem.. but Rif seems to find the awards extremely scary so we once again excused ourselves from the victory gallop so that we’d all stay in one piece!! We won another cooler so lucky Stentano gets one too now ;) and the company Fancy Pants sponsored a pair of customized riding pants so I get to design my own pair!!! This could be fun :D
Sunday was freestyle day… well let’s just say I didn’t realized how nervous I was about riding them.. I pretty much went into it completely blind having never ridden to the music before because of the tight squeeze to getting the music just in time for the show. I think both Rif and I were holding our breaths the entire time.. which might I add is not the best idea so these next few weeks you can imagine what we will be working on at home! We still did really well for the first go with a 68% and 0.8% off of first place. By the time it came to Stentano’s freestyle.. I think all my adrenaline had worn off and I was exhausted along with him I think.. after riding him previously that morning where he decided to be a complete crazy thing squealing and bucking.. so we went in and tried to push for all we had left in us but we had some costly mistakes and came 4th with 62%. I must say though that I absolutely love my music – Karen Robinson did such a great job with it so I just need to get down the technical part of it and then we will be ready to go get em!!
It was so fun to see Karen ride her developing Grand Prix class where she did an awesome job scoring 67% and then 68% and then 65% in her Grand Prix class on Sunday!!!
These next few days I will take a little easier on them and then get back to it near the end of the week! Our next show will be in 3 weeks so we have a little more of a break in between this time. I dropped mom off at the airport yesterday to head home.. sending her off to the cold weather :( but she’ll be back out in just over a week with April for her Spring Break and for my birthday weekend! And Esmee, my good riding friend, is also going to be coming down for my birthday weekend so I am super excited!!
It was so incredible to journey through the show with mom again and have her by my side each step of the way supporting me one hundred percent. I feel so blessed to have all her help and to know how excited dad was back at home hearing how things were going! And big thanks to Karen as well for all of her help at the show! I cannot tell you how much these two horses mean to me. They are truly blessing my life and touching me in such a way I can't quite explain. To be out doing something because you love it and because you can is more than I could ever ask for. It's a partnership and all I want is to keep dancing away with these amazing creatures and to never lose sight of the joy they bring me.
Thank you so much for the incredible outreach of encouragement and excitement for me! You are all so inspiring and I am so ready to keep on living this dream and to see where it will take us!! Please keep the emails coming! I love hearing from you all!
All my love,
Monica
I hope everything back at home is going well! I hear the weather is getting cold again :S Thinking about you all and so grateful for the amazing support and encouragement you are all giving me.
As I think a lot of you facebookers have already seen, the show was fantastic! But for those of you not on facebook I shall fill you all in :)
We had beautiful weather and it always brings back good memories being back in the Del Mar area. The first year we made our trip down to SoCal we stayed in Del Mar so it was nice to see so many familiar faces! The show was organized so well and like always was such a pleasure to be a part of! And I also met 2 girls that are competing with me that happen to be literally stabled just down the road from where I am at El Campeon!! So that is pretty sweet!
Wednesday we rolled into the show grounds around 2:00pm after getting stuck in some LA traffic so our 2 hour drive ended up being 3 hours but hey we’re getting used to the crawling 5 lane freeways here so it’s all good ;) Wednesday ended up being quite an exhausting day after getting everything set up and both horses ridden but we kept ourselves laughing and finished the night going out for dinner with the Dodd family, fellow Canadians from back home, so that was so nice to catch up!
Thursday it all started! We had our warm up class which I always like to use to get the nerves out and get back into competition mode. Rif did exactly what I asked for and we won with 68% and Stentano was fairly cooperative and we scored 62%. The jog followed later that afternoon and all was good and we were moved forward to the rest of the show!
Friday was one of those hurry up and wait kinda days as I didn’t ride until around 3 and then close to 5ish so I got on Stentano earlier that day just to loosen him up. We had some tension in our test with Rif as she got quite electric but we stilled managed to get a 67% and took the class and then almost a 61% with Stentano where I believe we ended up placing 6th out of 11 riders. It felt so amazing to go into the awards hearing the Canadian anthem! The prizes were great! Yes prizes.. at a dressage show!! I won a cooler and a gift certificate to one of the show vendors that is now paying for a big chunk of a new Samshield Helmet for of me.. and we’re going with bit of a Canadian theme so I’m super excited!
Saturday was even better for Rif with less tension! A 68% to once again take the class! And Stentano placed 5th (making it into the awards too :)) with a 62%. We had another proud Canadian moment in the awards ceremony listening to the anthem.. but Rif seems to find the awards extremely scary so we once again excused ourselves from the victory gallop so that we’d all stay in one piece!! We won another cooler so lucky Stentano gets one too now ;) and the company Fancy Pants sponsored a pair of customized riding pants so I get to design my own pair!!! This could be fun :D
Sunday was freestyle day… well let’s just say I didn’t realized how nervous I was about riding them.. I pretty much went into it completely blind having never ridden to the music before because of the tight squeeze to getting the music just in time for the show. I think both Rif and I were holding our breaths the entire time.. which might I add is not the best idea so these next few weeks you can imagine what we will be working on at home! We still did really well for the first go with a 68% and 0.8% off of first place. By the time it came to Stentano’s freestyle.. I think all my adrenaline had worn off and I was exhausted along with him I think.. after riding him previously that morning where he decided to be a complete crazy thing squealing and bucking.. so we went in and tried to push for all we had left in us but we had some costly mistakes and came 4th with 62%. I must say though that I absolutely love my music – Karen Robinson did such a great job with it so I just need to get down the technical part of it and then we will be ready to go get em!!
It was so fun to see Karen ride her developing Grand Prix class where she did an awesome job scoring 67% and then 68% and then 65% in her Grand Prix class on Sunday!!!
These next few days I will take a little easier on them and then get back to it near the end of the week! Our next show will be in 3 weeks so we have a little more of a break in between this time. I dropped mom off at the airport yesterday to head home.. sending her off to the cold weather :( but she’ll be back out in just over a week with April for her Spring Break and for my birthday weekend! And Esmee, my good riding friend, is also going to be coming down for my birthday weekend so I am super excited!!
It was so incredible to journey through the show with mom again and have her by my side each step of the way supporting me one hundred percent. I feel so blessed to have all her help and to know how excited dad was back at home hearing how things were going! And big thanks to Karen as well for all of her help at the show! I cannot tell you how much these two horses mean to me. They are truly blessing my life and touching me in such a way I can't quite explain. To be out doing something because you love it and because you can is more than I could ever ask for. It's a partnership and all I want is to keep dancing away with these amazing creatures and to never lose sight of the joy they bring me.
Thank you so much for the incredible outreach of encouragement and excitement for me! You are all so inspiring and I am so ready to keep on living this dream and to see where it will take us!! Please keep the emails coming! I love hearing from you all!
All my love,
Monica
Monday, March 5, 2012
Adios Burbank and Hola Del Mar!
Well I've got a little sneak peak for you from the last show finally! The first one is of Rif and I in our last PSG test of the weekend where we scored almost 72%. And I had no idea but it turned out that we won the youth PSG high score of the weekend so that was quite the pleasant surprise!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM0lIH0zIrk&feature=youtube_gdata
And the champ Stentano that keeps on trying with a little attitude here and there ;) This was the YR Individual test where we scored 60% as you will be able to tell from the rather large amount of mistakes in there.. but we're chipping away :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob0ou-CmVpo&feature=youtube_gdata
Tomorrow morning mom flies back in to help me get things ready for our depart to Del Mar on Wednesday! Thursday is the warm up class and then Friday to Sunday are the actual qualifying CDI classes. I will be debuting my freestyles for the first time so I am so excited about that! I just got the music today and they are both so lovely (thanks to the freestyle master Karen Robinson) so now I've got a week to get the music down... we can do this!!
Thank you so much for those that sent all those inspiring emails. I am really looking forward to this weekend and if I have a chance I will try to briefly get online to update :)
As well, I was able to move Stentano and Rif down to the main barn this past weekend as some stalls opened up. It is GORGEOUS! It definitely is not as quiet and peaceful as the upper older barn, but this way the horses can be watched all the time and turned out under supervision. The are both very happy in there big bedded stalls.. I think feeling somewhat like royalty ;)
I hope everyone is well back home!
xoxo Monica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM0lIH0zIrk&feature=youtube_gdata
And the champ Stentano that keeps on trying with a little attitude here and there ;) This was the YR Individual test where we scored 60% as you will be able to tell from the rather large amount of mistakes in there.. but we're chipping away :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob0ou-CmVpo&feature=youtube_gdata
Tomorrow morning mom flies back in to help me get things ready for our depart to Del Mar on Wednesday! Thursday is the warm up class and then Friday to Sunday are the actual qualifying CDI classes. I will be debuting my freestyles for the first time so I am so excited about that! I just got the music today and they are both so lovely (thanks to the freestyle master Karen Robinson) so now I've got a week to get the music down... we can do this!!
Thank you so much for those that sent all those inspiring emails. I am really looking forward to this weekend and if I have a chance I will try to briefly get online to update :)
As well, I was able to move Stentano and Rif down to the main barn this past weekend as some stalls opened up. It is GORGEOUS! It definitely is not as quiet and peaceful as the upper older barn, but this way the horses can be watched all the time and turned out under supervision. The are both very happy in there big bedded stalls.. I think feeling somewhat like royalty ;)
I hope everyone is well back home!
xoxo Monica
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Video footage.. uploading uploading.. and.. no success
Hey Everyone,
So I've been trying to get some video footage up from the show but I seem to be having some technical difficulties! My goal is to figure it out by the weekend so you can at least see a sneak peak into our little world down here :)
Our next show is next weekend so we don't have much down time in between. Monday the ponies had a well deserved day off and then back to work we have gone! Rif and I are figuring each other out more and more each day so that has been really cool! And as for Stentano.. the bar has been raised so he's not quite so sure about this whole situation at times.. but he's trying hard :)
The weather has been a tad chilly lately, but I hear I shall not complain because it has been quite unpleasant back home lately!!
I better keep this short tonight so I can get off to bed but I will write again this weekend :)
Hope you are all well back home!
Monica
So I've been trying to get some video footage up from the show but I seem to be having some technical difficulties! My goal is to figure it out by the weekend so you can at least see a sneak peak into our little world down here :)
Our next show is next weekend so we don't have much down time in between. Monday the ponies had a well deserved day off and then back to work we have gone! Rif and I are figuring each other out more and more each day so that has been really cool! And as for Stentano.. the bar has been raised so he's not quite so sure about this whole situation at times.. but he's trying hard :)
The weather has been a tad chilly lately, but I hear I shall not complain because it has been quite unpleasant back home lately!!
I better keep this short tonight so I can get off to bed but I will write again this weekend :)
Hope you are all well back home!
Monica
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