Monday, April 7, 2014

Barn Building Week 2

At the end of week 2, the "barn" and "arena" look painfully similar to the end of week 1.  The turn from winter to spring rain has literally washed away my hope of huge progress last week.  I refuse to post pictures as it would be like playing one of those games "can you pick out 7 things that are different between these 2 photos."  You'd get to 5 things pretty quickly, and then for the life of you not be able to find the other two.

But, two very exciting things have happened over the past week.  

1. Our arena builder came by to check out the land and discuss some details.  Stupid rain aside, there is a very good chance my arena will be done in early May. WOO HOO!  I will have to set up a lounge chair in the middle of it until the horses arrive.  If I can't ride in it, I can at least lay in it!!

2. The ground FINALLY dried out enough on a day above 20 degrees that I actually had 2 seconds to spare, so the first of the cross country jumps moved from the front yard into the side fields where the paddocks will eventually go.  If one more workman asked me "what the heck are those things in the front yard" I was going to cry! 

And one other pretty exciting thing happened just today -- after going back and forth in my mind a thousand times (plus at least 10 emails to my poor builder), I finally picked a color for the barn siding.  I'm pretty sure at some point my builder must have drafted an email to me that went about like this:  "Dear Crazy Lady,  whether you pick color A or the indistinguishable hue difference of Color B, if you want your barn construction to start next week, you need to pick one today.  A or B.  Pick one. We haven't even put a pole in the ground yet and you are making me crazy.  You. Are. Fun."   Thankfully he deleted that version and sent a much nicer version that included promises that I will love the barn no matter which color I pick and that if I hate it that much -- we'll figure out a way to fix it.  Bless him.  

Mini XC course with the new (very blue!) roundpen/outdoor stall.

Mini Houses!  I have plans for this area to be our mini "Head of the Lake"

Set the rolltop/bench strategically to let me mom sit and watch the building process - from a safe distance!