Wow, what a whirlwind weekend. A friend of mine celebrated her bachelorette weekend by staying in town, and a huge group of girls participated in all sorts of Disney princess themed fun and frolic. We bounced on trampolines, pampered ourselves with mani/pedis, and completed the most intense scavenger hunt ever! Even rode in my first rickshaw! And I am proud to say that I took the individual scavenger hunt challenge uber seriously and won myself a brand new fairy-princess-wand (because who doesn’t need one of those!) and was on the winning team! Go team Ariel! Can’t wait to attend what will surely be a beautiful wedding in a few weeks! PS follow me on instagram!

Bachelorette Weekend Fun!

Unfortunately I was not able to stay for the last couple activities, as I had to get up bright and early ( a 5:35 am alarm is not so easy after a day of running around! ) to go XC Schooling in Southern Pines. The farm we went to has one of my favorite cross country courses, simply because the number of combinations and vast array of fences to jump is incredible!

Getting up with the sun!

This was the first time in a long while that Foster and I schooled with a group lesson, which consisted of two rock star high schoolers on the brink of Novice/Training, and Ali and I with our boys at Beginner Novice/Novice. There were many questions thrown at us that we had never done before, such as jumping downhill, jumping out of water, and plenty of combinations. One such combination was an upbank, three strides to a hanging log which we went over and then came back to the other way (jump to a down bank). Foster handled this, the water questions, and the ditches with great confidence and enthusiasm. We did have a couple tricky moments at two jumps at the beginning of the venture, where he decided to take advantage of my open left rein instead of the fence, but after I focused on riding him straight everything went more smoothly than I could have hoped for.

Our group getting their feet wet.. and me desperately trying to not let Foster roll! He LOVES the water!

Overall the main lesson was to continue to ride him straight through his shoulders, and once again, to allow him to open up his stride and not hold him together so much. Once I gained confidence in him it was so much fun to let him go a bit! While we didn’t get to tackle any serious Novice questions, we accomplished so much and it was a great learning experience. I am excited to take him back in a couple weeks for a horse trials!

Jumping out of the water!

Ali and Baron warming up!

Ali and Baron out of the water! Whee!

Leg is getting tighter! Hooray!

Photos are compliments of one of the sweet moms watching our group school! Looking forward to seeing them again soon!