• Saturday, October 24, 2009
Reflections

Please visit my new blog, Reflections. It has my poetry, stories, essays, and more. Please feel free to comment on any post. I love reading feedback on what I write! So please visit Reflections. I'll still be posting news on this blog (hopefully)! I'll putting a link in my links (under my friends).

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• Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Now We're Finally Done with 4-H!!

Yesterday we checked out our State Fair Exhibits. We all got blue ribbons, me for my Photography, Vetrinary Science, and Computer, Teddy for his Small Engines, and Meghan for her Floriculture. It was great, because it was our first year going to State Fair, Teddy's and my second year in 4-H and Meghan's first. And all the projects we went to State Fair in were projects that we were first year members in! I though that it was a lot of fun. But it is nice to be done with 4-H, atleast until the project fair in October. And the awards banquet. And...

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• Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Meet Mac

Now that Mac has been a member of our family for over two weeks, I'll finally blog about him. Macaroni is a roan pony, about 16 or 17, that our neighbors are leasing and keeping at our barn. So Ripley has a friend. He (Ripley) is so overly affectionate it's funny. One morning Rip and Mac were both in Mac's stall (Mac can open his stall door) But if Mac tries to go in Ripley's stall...then he is reminded that Rip is top horse. Basically Ripley's attitude is "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine."

Speaking of Ripley, he's been a great horse. Even though he's older, he can still go pretty fast. I'm looking forward to next year when I hope to show him in halter and contesting. I think he moves well enough to be an English horse, if I could train him to bring his head down some more. I thought that mabye Western Pleasure would be a possibility, but he would lap every other horse in the ring!

Currently we're working on slimming down the Ripster. He's been on pretty rich pasture, so he has some extra weight he could lose. So I'm going to start him on an 1 hour 20 minute workout plan. Eventually he'll be doing 15 minutes of walk/trot work in the morning either in-hand, under saddle, or on the lunge line (probably a rotation of all three). In the afternoon, we'll do 45 minutes of walk-trot-canter work, focusing on either contesting patterns or other gymnastic exercises. And finally we'll wrap up with a 20 minute trail ride in the woods.

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• Saturday, July 25, 2009
4-H Photography

These are the pictures on my 4-H Photography board (I got Champion with these photos)

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• Friday, July 24, 2009
Finally Done with 4-H!!

Today we went to the opening day of the 4-H Fair. After a week of open judging and agonizing over our projects, we finally got to see what all our exhibits got. I had 12 projects, Teddy had 7, and Meggie had 8. That makes a grand total of 27 projects for Mom to try to help us get done. There were a couple nights when we stayed up late trying to put the finishing touches on my Photograpy or Computer project.

But when 12 of our 27 projects got at least Reserve Champion, it made it worth it. My mom is going to post photos on her blog tonight, and I'll have some more, once our exhibits are checked out on Monday. Here is the summary of our 4-H projects; the star means that project is going on to state fair.

Emelie

1. Bicycle- Reserve Champion

2. Child Development- Blue

3. Computer- Grand Champion *

4. Foods- Reserve Champion

5. Horse and Pony- Champion

6. Horseless Horseman- Reserve Grand Champion

7. Microwave Cooking- Reserve Champion

8. Misc. Crafts- Blue

9. Photography- Champion *

10. Self Determined- Champion

11. Shooting Sports- White

12. Vet Science- Reserve Grand Champion *

Teddy

1. Bicycle- Honor Group

2. Computer- Blue

3. Electric- Blue

4. Misc. Crafts- Blue

5. Self Determined- Honor Group

6. Shooting Sports- White

7. Small Engines- Champion *

Meghan

1. Fine Arts- Blue

2. Floriculture- Champion *

3. Foods- Blue

4. Forestry- Honor Group

5. Microwave Cooking- Champion

6. Misc. Crafts- Blue

7. Self Determined- Blue

8. Sewing- Blue

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• Friday, July 24, 2009
Happy Birthday Teddy!

Today is Teddy's birthday. He turned 12 at 12:31 this afternoon. For his birthday, we're going to have lemon cake with lemon frosting and an ice cream buffet. He's already gotten his present, "Ripley's Watering Trough," or a dirt bike. It was sorta funny, I had to pretend to be all excited about this imaginary horse trough without letting him figure out just why we were going, as a family, to pick it up. It was pretty great to see his face when he found out.

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• Friday, July 10, 2009
4th of July Photos

Here are the photos I talked about in my last entry. Sorry I don't have many of people, I sorta forgot that this was a family reunion, meaning, I should have taken pictues of my family. Oh well, I think my mom has some pictures on her blog.

Cumberland Falls

Another picture of the Falls

My artistic photo of the falls

This was Heidi- all weekend

The food was delicious

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• Tuesday, July 7, 2009
4th of July

For 4th of July we went to Cumberland Falls, KY. It was cool to have a family reunion for the first time in 5 years. Three Stumpfs weren't even born then. Some memorable events:

#1- Teddy vs. Bug. On a short hike around the picnic grounds, Teddy got a bug stuck in his ear. It got really deep into his ear canal and was buzzing right next to his eardrum. That's one of those things that I'de rather break another toe than have happen to me. Anyway, my dad drove him back to the cabin where they flushed out his ear. The bug died right away, but it wouldn't come out. We thought we were going to have to take him to the hospital. But eventually, it came out and everything was ok.

#2- The Dark and Story Afternoon. On Sunday, the 5th, I went on a 45 minute trail ride with my Aunt Nan, my dad, and Meghan. All day the skies had been gray and threating to dump on us, but so far everything was has been limited to a drizzle. We had literally mounted up when it began to pour. There was one flash of lightning so big that it made those bombproof horses jump. But the ride went on, and we arrived back at the stable looking like drowned people. I was just glad I didn't bring my camera.

#3- The Round Trip. Both going to and leaving the state park had some adventures. The highlight of the "to" trip was when we stopped at McDonalds. As we were going to pile back into our stuffed van, the door handle broke. So, we simply climbed in the back doors, over my 6,000 pages of reading material, and into our seats. On the "from" trip, nothing quite so fun happened, except we were stuck in traffic for an hour and we couldn't find the Ikea.

It was a fun vacation. The scenery was beautiful and I might have taken some decent pictures. I'll go through them and post them later. Right now I have to go babysit, but I'll write more later.

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• Thursday, July 2, 2009
Ripley!

I finally have my own horse! He's a bay QH gelding named Ripley. He is 15 years old, so he's a perfect age for a large family of beginners. Ripley is just like a big puppy dog. In the middle of my riding lesson a few weeks ago, he stopped right in front of my dad so Dad would pet him ! My dad took a lot of pictures at my lesson, but the light in the arena was bad, so only a couple turned out.

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• Monday, June 29, 2009
Heidi Wants to Be a Rock Star

This is my two-year-old sister Heidi starring in Heidi the Headbanger. This is a candid video that my mom captured on an average morning in our house. Needless to say, this is Heidi's favorite video. Click on the link to view it on my mom's blog.

Heidi the Headbanger

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