From "Chaos" to "Everlasting"

The past two weeks have been really exciting for me.  Ok, so I get really excited about lots of stuff every day, but this is a legit level of excitement.  Why, you ask?  Because I am filling a hole in my life that I have been sorely missing ever since I moved away from East Lansing:  working with middle school and high school aged youth.

I was a leader in the middle school program called "Chaos" at RiverView Church in Holt, MI before I moved out west.  I got to have some crazy awesome relationships with some of the most amazing girls and leaders ever, and I miss them dearly.  For brief proof of how much I love them, why I love them, and to continue to capture your attention, I shall briefly employ the use of photographs (many of these were taken by the very talented Mike Kates, and you should check out his photography here!).

Why I love working with teenagers:

1. You are allowed to play crazy games with them.  Like "Ninja," which I really suck at.

2. They are beautiful, inside and out! :)

3.  They keep you on your toes.  Ever have NINETY-FIVE 7th and 8th graders come to a lock-in???  That'll keep you more on your toes than anything else I have ever experienced in this life.

4.  I love them.  Seriously, I love them enough to let them cover me with snow.  Which I have a huge hatred towards.

5.  You can tire them out at retreats by making them run through 3 feet of snow until they are no longer hyper.  And they don't even question your motive!!

6.  You get to let your inner goof free!!  Case in point, the above "Jedi-Snuggie-Warrior" (she is only sighted at the afore-mentioned all-nighters with obscene amounts of teens).

Convinced of my love for my kid-os yet?  Good.  Back to the current reason for excitement.

I've been searching for a new church family here in SLO to get involved with for about five months.  There are so many wonderful churches in the area that are all strongly rooted in the truth of scripture that I've had trouble committing to one church family and have been attending a different one every week almost.  But lately I've been attending Mountainbrook Church (or "Mb") and have decided that this will be my home church in SLO.

They have a fantastic opportunity for me to serve with their youth, and I have been in the process the past two weeks of applying for a staff position with their junior high and high school youth group called "Everlasting."  This is crazy exciting for me, because I have really been aching for some youth in my life, and getting this process started is super encouraging.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE teaching undergrads, but sometimes its nice to let my professional side stay at home while I play games and let my inner teenager be refreshed.

I will be in the "trial period" for about 3 months before I officially commit to be a member of the leadership team.  What this consists of is just hanging out with the youth on Sundays and Weds nights and getting to know them, "Everlasting" as a whole, and the other leaders.  The evaluation period is an opportunity for me to check them out pretty thoroughly and vice versa.  As of right now, I really feel like this is where God is calling me to serve in the church, but its nice to know that I will get to have open and honest discussion about becoming a staff member with all of the other staff before officially committing to it.

I've also learned quite a bit about taking an honest look at my spiritual gifts during this past week, but I think that topic deserves a post all its own, so we'll leave this one with a "to be continued" teaser :)

It's good to be back in the saddle

...Er, back in the show ring.........not riding......... being behind the scenes, I mean.

Ever since I was about 10 years old, horse shows have been a HUGE part of my life.  I grew up showing horses, and most of my childhood and teenage years were spent away on the weekends competing along the east coast rather than doing normal high school things like attending school dances or football games.  During college (and after) I had a horse training business, so I was constantly on the road showing with my customers and their horses.

Thanks to grad school and then this move out to CA, I haven't been actively involved in the horse show community in about 3 years.  While living in MI, I did get the chance to go to a few little schooling shows with some young hunter horses I was working with (which was awesome), but I have very prominently felt the absence of this activity in my life.

People who show horses understand this addiction and will sympathize with the withdrawal that I have been suffering from.  Non-horse show people (i.e. the majority of the world, ha!) generally just think I'm crazy for putting so much money and time into it.  For those who fall into the latter category, this is why I love showing horses:

• Your horse show group is like a second family.  It is such a fun community to be a part of!  When you're on the road and showing, you eat together, sleep together, work horses together, celebrate together in victory, and console and comfort one another following a difficult ride or unfair or poor placing from the judge.  
• I'm competitive (shocker). 
• I absolutely love working with people and horses to strengthen their riding and training abilities.  Watching people make progress towards their personal goals and then achieve these goals is incredibly rewarding to me.
• There is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that you just had a spectacular ride or pattern in the ring.  Regardless of placing, the sense of pride and accomplishment that you feel is phenomenal.  Having a great connection with a horse and executing your task with clear and discrete communication with your mount creates this great ride, and if you aren't a rider, you probably don't understand how awesome this is.
• I love the enthusiasm and competitive environment at horse shows.

I now have the opportunity to get back involved in the show ring as the coach of the Cal Poly Equestrian Team (CPET) and the Cal Poly Dressage Team.  This past weekend was my first experience as an IHSA (Intercollegiate Horse Show Association) coach, and it was AWESOME.

We took the western CPET team to their last regular season show at the University of California, Davis's equestrian center.  There were 5 college/university teams there competing.  We took 17 riders from Cal Poly.  Let me rephrase that, we took 17 phenomenal, awesome, hilarious, positive, supporting, encouraging, competitive, kind riders from Cal Poly.  And they kicked butt.  

The stats:

Hi Point Team both  days
Hi Point Rider (Mia) both days

Regional Champions for the regular season
Qualified to send a team to Semi-finals (the step right before Nationals)
Six Cal Poly team members winning their classes (5 second place ribbons for individual rides)

Some of the spoils from the weekend

The whole team with the high point ribbon for day 1

Zoe hugging Marin after Zoe's win in the intermediate horsemanship class

Kendra showing in intermediate horsemanship

Allisen and Abigail (walk-jog riders)

Riley in walk-jog horsemanship

Jen in walk-jog horsemanship

Needless to say it was a good weekend!  This team is great, and I am really excited about their potential for the National (which, by the by, is in Raleigh, NC this year in May!).  It feels really, really, really good to be back in the show ring.  Wish the hunt seat team good luck this weekend as we head to Stanford!

Food for thought:
How Nigeria has changed due to oil drilling
We can't feed the world with organic farming
What are you grateful for today?

I hate horses, but I love my boyfriend

Ok, ok....maybe hate is a bit dramatic.  But some days I seriously dislike them, which is unfortunate, since they are my livelihood.  Today was definitely one of those days.

This may come as a shock to many of you, but they tend to injure me frequently (and many times, I injure myself while doing things for them, but not directly related to handling or riding them).

Allow me to paint a picture of my day for you, so that you can fully understand my current dislike of this animal:

Thursdays I don't teach any classes, so one would assume it would be a slower day for me, right?  WRONG.  Since I am in charge of managing the Equine Center, I am in charge of all of the paperwork and finances that go along with that, so Thursdays are usually spent in my office trying to catch up for the week.  This Thursday was exceptionally busy with meetings and so forth, and I needed to vaccinate several of our pregnant mares today.  This got pushed to the end of the day (when I was tired and semi-cranky), so I wandered around our hundreds of acres hunting down mares in various fields and sticking them with needles for two hours (sounds like fun, eh?).

Now, broodmares are docile, quiet, gentle souls, right?  Generally, yes.  Two of them on our property, not so much: Special and Merry.  Don't let the names fool you....these horses are minions of the Anti-Christ.   Its unfortunate that they produce such high dollar babies, or else I would have no problem donating them to our Anatomy and Physiology dissection lab.

Special thought that this would be an appropriate response to an IM injection:

Lets just say I won't be using my left shoulder anytime soon.  Merry decided to take this approach to resist:

I wasn't paying super close attention and she was able to get a good grip on my right tricep.  Sheesh.  That's what I get for not making my students do this today, I suppose.

But on a lighter note, life is still good.  This past week we had some absolutely beautiful sunsets (sorry there aren't any from the beach...I was in the water on my surf board without my camera :) ) and I ate some pretty phenomenal seafood a few times.

Also, my Christmas present from Landon arrived!!!!!!!!!!!

But first, a little bit about my boyfriend, so that you can fully appreciate the awesomeness of this gift.  Landon is a "manly man."  He likes football, beef cattle, eats steak and potatoes, and is a powerlifter.  For example, he dead lifts 600 lbs,

squats about the same amount,

and benches about 400.

However, there is more to this burly macho-dude than meets the eye....  He has another talent.  Check out what he made me for Christmas this year:

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL????  He painted it!  And its a huge 30" x 48" canvas (please excuse my hideous red wall in the background)!

So, when I have crappy days like this where I hate horses, I come home and sit down on my couch with an ice pack and some vicodin, and look at my beautiful ocean painting hanging over my fireplace.  And I am instantly reminded that I am loved, that my boyfriend rocks, and that my God is amazing for creating something as beautiful and wonderful as the ocean and sunsets.

Food for thought:
Psalm 16:11
Healthy childhood expressiveness (hey, she loves her fishes!)
When was the last time you tried something new?
The Year of the Dragon (according the Chinese calendar) starts 1/23/12

2012 Bucket List

I will fully blame this post on Caroline Merrill.  She recently posted about Caroline & Co.'s accomplished (and not-so-accomplished) 2011 Bucket List items and made a new 2012 list full of fun things (some of which included adventures out west, which greatly excites me).

I thought it was a fantastic idea!  I have several things I want to do this year, and sharing them with y'all is a great way to hold me accountable to actually do them....right?  Additionally, I am sure that several of you will find many of my items quite humorous.  So be it. And I am aware that this is an ambitious list.  Good thing I am an ambitious girl, eh? So, without further ado....

Alaina's semi-copycat 2012 Bucket List:

1. Buy a gaited mule (hopefully I will accomplish this one at Bishop Mule Days over Memorial Day weekend if nothing else....these suckers are slim pickin's out west...who knew??)
2. Do a powerlifting competition (specifically, open womens 123 or 132 class, deadlifting).  Scoff if you like.  Its happening.
3. Take both the Cal Poly Dressage Team and the Cal Poly Equestrian Team to their respective IDA and IHSA National Championship meets (by the by, I am now the coach for both of these teams at Cal Poly).
4. Go to a San Diego Chargers game.
5. Try snowboarding for a second time.  Come home without crutches.
6. Become fluent in Italian (I am currently on the second level of my learning program for it!)
7. Make a T-shirt quilt out of all those dang T-shirts I have lying around.
8. Get a working dog and learn how to train it on cattle and sheep.
9. Go whale watching.
10. Hike/backpack at least 2 new trails every month.
11. Camping trips to at least 3 national parks.
12. Become more involved with the SLO homeless community.
13. Get my horse show judge's card with at least one national breed association (NWHA, AQHA, USDF, or USHJA).
14. Become a leader in my new church's youth ministry program.
15. Plant a mini-garden in my yard (er...in the pots in my yard..).
16. Make at least one crafty thing for my house each month (yay Pinterest!)

2012 looks like fun to me :)

Video blog anyone?

Just a quick video tour of the Cal Poly Equine Center for my horsey friends who may have interest in the facilities  we have here (had to break it up into two parts to keep it short enough to post on YouTube) and a video tour of my house at Peterson Ranch.  Sorry for the random clicking that my camera makes, and sorry for it being super sunny.  OK, so I'm not sorry for that part, because its always super sunny here!  And that makes me happy.

The house needs some work, as you can see, but it is really nice to finally be out of an apartment.

Part 1 of my working life:

Part 2

Sydney's New Year's Resolution

Sydney is my fur baby in a beagle-shaped package.  I've had her for 5-ish years (I think??) and together we have moved 12 times to various homes, including our most recent trek across the country from NC to CA.

At the Petrified Forest National Park (but apparently you aren't supposed to let your dogs on the bajillion year old wood... who knew?)

Really bored in the back of the truck for 8 days.

Now, I'm pretty sure that dogs don't pick out New Year's Resolutions.  Which I think makes them smarter than most people.  If you couldn't tell, I'm not a big fan of New Year's Resolutions.  If you don't like something, fix it now...don't resolve to fix it only at the start of the New Year.  I think it just annoys me that they almost always fail (I'm guilty of this as well.  No pointing fingers here.).  Case in point, my gym is already filled with the "New Year's" crowd.  Which would be a great thing, except that I know most of them won't stick it out and will be gone in like two weeks, which is sad.  Anyway, off the soap box.

I have made an exception to my soap box rule for the dog and have made a resolution for her:  "In 2012 I will stop trying to die every late December/early January."

At the start of last January, she ruptured a disc in her neck and had to undergo emergency surgery to fix it.  Poor little thing was in insanely excruciating pain and was super pitiful.  I'm sure it was quite a sight to watch me on crutches (snowboarding is very different from surfing apparently) trying to maneuver her around during her two months of very intensive and critical cage rest.  Took about 4 months for her to get back to normal.  But she did recover fully.

This Saturday she tried to die again.  I got up early in the morning to find her in some kind of crazy anaphylactic shock.  After monitoring her vitals for a while, it was pretty obvious that she was having some serious issues with oxygen flow, and her temperature was dropping rapidly, so I took her to the vet.  She was in pretty bad shape (couldn't stand, super lethargic, loss of blood flow to her limbs, etc.) when I left her.  After pumping her full of fluids and putting her on oxygen, she turned right around.  I was able to bring her home that afternoon and she has been on the mend ever since.

Crazy thing is that we have NO IDEA what caused this.  I spent the entire day combing my house from bottom to top trying to find something that she could have gotten into/eaten/gotten bitten by/etc... Nada. Zip. Zilch.  Chest and abdomen X-rays came back normal, full blood panel and urinalysis came back normal.  Craziness.  Vets and myself are super stumped (especially because of the symptoms she presented;  they were conflicting...?).

So, the plus side is that the dog is healing.  She is almost back to her normal self.  The bad is we don't know what caused it or why.  Hopefully it was just a one-time freak deal.  

For fear of having my dog die, I ended up spending a wild and crazy New Year's Eve watching movies with her and falling asleep at about 9:30 pm.  Which is OK by me, since it was already the New Year on the east coast by that point anyway!  Oh, and for my friends who are small animal vets, you should definitely move to CA and start a practice, because you would make a killing.  Sheesh.