Easter

Happy Easter! It was such an incredibly nice day here. My day started off at 4am, at the barn getting my makeup done and my favorite horse beautiful for a morning photo shoot at the beach! My two girlfriends and I had a ball getting all pretty and running our horses down the beach and splashing in the water. It was one of my favorite Easter mornings ever. I absolutely can't wait to see how the pictures turned out!

After the photo shoot I ran over to the OClub for brunch with a bunch of friends from the squadron. Yummy food and good friends, so nice!




The day was just too pretty to spend inside so after brunch Brad and I headed over to Tropical Beach near our apartment. It was super low tide, so we walked around the tide pools and admired the incredibly almost neon blue water. So amazing! Days like this I love living here!!









Hope you had a great Easter too!!

Vietnam Bound

Exciting news from last post: We have booked our next vacation! Yes, so over the moon excited. We will be traveling to Vietnam at the end of the month! On the itinerary is the famous and romantic Ha Long Bay and Bai Tu Long Bay, staying an overnight on a traditional (but luxury) junk boat as we sail around the bay, swim, explore the area by kayak, and lounge on the beach or boat deck. Next we will tour Hanoi and possibly visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, One-Pillared Pagoda, House-on-Stilts, Temple of Literature, take a cyclo ride in the Old Quarter, and see Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngoc Son Temple. All the while we will be staying at a lovely 5 star hotel in a wonderful central location. As a nice bonus, we are stopping in Taipei, Taiwan for a day/night on our way to Vietnam, so we get a quick peek at that city and I get another 2 countries stamps in my passport!

Also on the traveling agenda is NEW ZEALAND this summer. And a cruise to MALAYSIA, THAILAND and SINGAPORE this winter. Excited is an understatement! If we do what we're planning then I will have visited 10 countries in 3 years!

This has been another pretty great week! To me things feel so normal, unexciting and ho-hum, but I'm living in another country, working a dream job and surrounded by tropical waters and palm trees ... so strange how the abnormal becomes normal!

I got some really, really nice rides on Makoto this week. Our dressage is getting so fancy-schmancy! Love him to absolute pieces. Really need to get some shots of him in action sometime soon.

I had great lessons this week and my students are just blowing me away lately. They have all come such along way. It will be very hard to part with some of them once PCS season starts this summer. This is my student Haley jumping Rocky:

I love my work friends so much. We all met at my favorite bagel place to talk and take care of some business. Probably the most fun work meeting ever. And of course Madie brought little Addison and her adorable, ruffly, pink bottom. She also had this hot pink flower headband and was too cute for words as usual. Baby fever alert!

Two of my co-workers and I are really excited about this weekend! We are having a photographer do a shoot for us with the horses at the beach!! I have never had professional photos done except at my wedding. Thrilled!

So of course I have nothing to wear to this photo shoot. Alexis happens to have her wedding dress here and is going to trash it, in fact it is this reason the whole thing got put into motion. Madie and I don't, so we went out shopping around the meager options on this island. I didn't have high hopes, but I decided to try some new stores. I went to Demure Ladies Boutique and went straight for the dresses, but didn't have any luck finding one full enough that would allow me to sit on the horse. But, the sales lady was oh-so-wonderful and helped me pick out a very beachy, flowy outfit. Here's a sneak peak.

Next I went to American Wave vintage shop and even though the store was pretty tiny it was packed full and constantly reminded me of a grandma's attic. Madie and I took turns in the dressing room putting on classic after classic. Unfortunately, most of our initial favorites were itty-bitty and it's true that people were just smaller way back when. Both of us however came away with vintage dresses to ride our horses in. My dress is far from my original vision, but given the options on this island beggars can't be choosers and Brad even said he liked it, and I know he'll tell me the truth. I tried on ALL my dresses for him and at the end he said "ehhh, no. Go buy something." And buy I did!

And here is Jade, stuffed into her dress that is now too small for her. It feels like just yesterday that it fit her. Getting big too fast! Looks like I need to do some shopping for her too. ;)
And we made some exciting plans for the end of the month! Here's a clue... we are going to the country where pho is from!

Pizza Night

This weekend we ventured out for some ooey-gooey delicious pizza at Bella Napoli. I've walked by this place many times on the seawall and have been tempted by the yummy Italian smells coming from this place, but yesterday was our first visit.

We started off with a nice big Italian salad and some popcorn shrimp that reminded me of bang-bang shrimp from Bonefish (at least what I remember from eating there 2.5 years ago). After that we each got 10 inch pizzas. I chose my staple margarita with fresh tomatoes and basil and Brad had the Hawaiian with pineapple and ham. Surprisingly we even had enough will power to save half of our pizzas for our lunch the next day.
This restaurant has an amazing view of the waves and ocean. I'd love to have dinner here again as the sun goes down. We were lucky enough to watch a fireworks show across the water during our dinner!

Awesome Week Recap

This has been a pretty nice week for my husband and me. Except that we had to spend the week apart. We both were working a lot, but that's not a bad thing when you love your job.
My week consisted of an easy week of lessons. I rewarded a bunch of my students with rides down to the beach. I got in some really good rides myself, which was great since I hadn't been riding very much with the show stuff going on.


Spring is in the air! I think we may be finally getting over the most rainy and grey winter ever over here. My parents sent me (and Brad) the cutest Easter basket. My parents know me all too well and were sure to pack Brad his own separate chocolate bunny. Not like my thighs actually need a whole chocolate bunny to themselves, but that's what running's for right?!


This week was our colt's 1st birthday! He's getting big so fast.

I used my post-show new found free time to relax on the balcony and read with the kitty. Yup, she's wearing a harness.


Jade is the apple of my eye. I had no idea I could love a cat so much. When my hubby is out of town she is pretty much glued to my side (or lap) and I love the company and how much she makes me laugh.


Brad, as I mentioned was away this past week on a work trip. But, check this out. This lucky duck got to fly to:
Majuro, Marshall Islands
Tonga
Ohakea, New Zealand (stayed in New Palmerston North)
Pago Pago, American Samoa
Pohnpei, Micronesia






The plane kept breaking down, so the poor thing had to spend a couple down days enjoying those tropical and exotic locations. Rough life! Yes, I'm jealous. But, he was on an important check ride flight, so he was kind of stressed. He acted as the aircraft commander and planned the whole entire flight from Oki to Majuro to Tonga to New Zealand to Pago Pago to Pohnpei and back to Oki and taught a brand new co-pilot at the same time. He did pass, so he's relieved. And I'm very proud of him!

Pretty successful work week for us both I'd say.

Where I've Been

I know I promised to be better about blogging, but I was sucked into a barn black hole. I've been working my tail off the last 2 months or so. We had our Spring Show last Saturday on St. Patrick's Day so I did a whole green theme (I love themes!) and honestly I'm so relieved it's all over. I had lots of green decorations, special green horse show ribbons and metals with green neck ribbons.

We had so many events leading up to this show and it was a ton of work. We had 3 clinics for dressage, jumping and riding to music or dressage freestyle. And a clean up day when we did a ton of paining and fixing up the barn. And then we had the day of horse show prep where we got all the horses prettied up for the show. Of course, it was all worth it to see my students show off their skills. All the students did really well. The reaction from my 6 year old student, Max, when he got his blue ribbon in jumping just totally made my day. His face just lit up and he squealed and gave me a big, long hug around the waist. Worth it. And we had some amazing raffles that were donated from local vendors and we raised a lot of money for the horses.





Yesterday one of the clients said "There is just something so nice about coming to a place where everyone gets along." It's so true. I completely love all the amazing ladies I get to work with! Not only do we spend a huge amount of time at work together, but we also love to hang out outside of work too. After work drinks and dinners at each others house. Just couldn't do what I do without them, well I wouldn't enjoy it half as much!