Back home in one piece

Well the trip to Ethiopia was quite a journey... it's an amazing country ...

the most important thing first ...

I present to you the GORGEOUS and wonderful Miss Elsa : )


now Miss Elsa is happily settling into her new home in Marin, Ca (not a bad life if you ask me : )

I did keep a sketch book for the first part of the trip till I was struck down with what we affectionately called the Ethiopian plague which well wasn't fun BUT we made it home thank goodness

here are a few pages.. this book belongs to Elsa now - although I need to get it to her...







Upon coming home I was greeted by the farm and tried to happily jump back into life.. but sadly I will say I did have to spend a few more days lying down then did have some visits to my Naturapath and got sent home with 2 prescriptions and about 4 bottles of homeopathic stuff and lots of marching orders for how to eat extra healthy.. I followed all these orders as since coming home my plague had turned into a horrible upper respiratory thing which had turned into bronchitis and was moving quickly towards pneumonia.. I thought I could "power through" with rest and water and citrus ... "wrong" I decided I needed help finally when I woke up on day four of being home with not one but two eyes swollen shut and covered in thick gooo (yuck) so I rinsed off my face and decided driving while not totally safe was necessary (my husband was gone to CA for some family stuff) ... so although I haven't' touched antibiotics ever in my adult life.. when my Naturapath took one look at me and prescribed them I figured I should go with it... so reluctantly I filled my three day pack of Azithromycin ... needless to say that Sh-t worked and now I'm back to playing with horses and holding down the fort while Brian is away.. I'm sort of glad he left so that I could get well and not get him sick...

Things around here are finally getting pretty darn verdant .. much to red's benifit : )



I do have the same "complaint" as last year towards my fruit trees.. they are LATE all the other trees in my county have been blooming for weeks and mine are still teasing me! my little canyon is it's own micro climate and is about 2 weeks behind... so I wait .. I think maybe after this warm weather we are supposed to get this weekend my patience may be rewarded.. so I wait.. in the mean time I happily have the daffodils and a few other spring flowers to keep me smiling...







speaking of smiling - Duane Van Dyke has been so good to me I can't even believe it... so I saw him after I got home and he invited me to a draft day and I thought ohh how great I will get to go and watch and learn and help out... and then when the lines where handed to me I happily accepted them... Daune has been really helping me to learn the draft world and been super generous with his time.... and it's been so fun ... The carriage driving I did back east in my last life didn't really teach me anything compared to what I'm learning from my time with Duane...


(photo from http://www.onemileshires.com/)

and one more reason to smile.. I can't wait till this guys comes home friday : )