since you all asked for it...

...here's the latest horse news. I think you all know that we had to move the horses when the El Toro Stables closed, so we moved to Anaheim Hills Saddle Club. We've been there for 4 months giving it a fair chance, but it's really not that great (I could use much stronger language, but I'll keep it family-friendly here). The have "run out of hay" twice now since we've been there, and that's completely unacceptable! How can a stable with over 100 horses run out of hay!? It's like they wait till the last minute to order more and then don't factor in the time it will take to get the delivery. When we moved there in the first place it wasn't really anyone's first choice, but with all the stables being full, there wasn't really another option that was close by. Now some spots have opened up at the OC Fairgrounds, so we're moving the horses there next week. It will be a pain in the rear to move again, but it will be a much better situation (we hope!)

Anyways, here are a couple pics to keep it interesting of me riding. It doesn't have much to do with the post other than the fact that it's a horse and I'm riding it. You can also see the covered arena which we have now which we won't have at the fairgrounds, but that's ok. We didn't have one at El Toro so no biggie.

testing again

since tara mentioned that our filmstrip appears in different locations sometimes, i wanted to do a test. Now i've noticed that it isn't the right width anymore. I think our posts have gotten wider or something. strange....

oh, simple answer that I just figured out. the post column is relative to what size the viewer's window is. the navigaiton column and the filmstrip is static no matter what.

why do things have to grow so much in socal?

So, Jay and I finally bit the bullet and hired landscapers to come and do some massive yard clean-up. Everything was getting way overgrown (which doesn't take too long to happen here). They basically did a ton of weeding and trimming (or hacking, more like it) of all the bushes/shrubs/wall cover and edged the lawns. Then Jay re-shaped the borders while I filled with bark so hopefully the weeds don't grow back so easily. Jay also hacked back some tree branches and moved the little bird house that was hidden in the front to a nice spot in the back where, as he put it, "awww, looks sooo cute!" (think of Jay's semi-sarcastic tone of voice). I also fixed the bent and dented solar lights that somehow got all messed up (it couldn't possibly be from Jay running into them with the lawnmower, now, could it?...) I also tried to cut back/prune the sickly flowers in the back planter, hopefully they come back ok. The last thing we want to do is plant some little flowers in the front walkway border, where there is just bark now. Then lastly there is the picture of the yard waste that has been piled up in the side yard. Now, why didn't we do the tree trimming before the landscapers came, since they could have hauled away our mess as well as thiers?! I only wish we would have taken some before pictures so you could really see the difference. I'd say it looks darn good now, darn good!

Leadership Retreat

Well, unfortunately we didn't bring our camera, so sorry Joshua, no pics. We had a good time up in the mountains (near Big Bear) for the Rock Harboar life group leadership retreat last weekend. We learned about our "strengths" and "talents" and how to use them within our life group and for God. We also had to do these hilarious skits where we were given a strange object that we had to make up a use for and then act out an infomercial. Some were so funny they made me cry! My group's item was salad tossers and we used them as self-defense tools. Jay's group got this big wrench thing, and they used it as a hobbit hip replacement. It was sooooo funny! Of course Jay played a hobbit and went up there barefoot - That's when I really wished we would have brought the camera! So, inspite of getting no sleep whatsoever, we had a good time!

My Frustrations with eBay

Well I just had to vent about my frustrations with eBay. I spent probably about 5 hours last night listing some of my Breyer horses and other Breyer items, only to find this morning that eBay deleted all my listings!

Those jerks!

Their reason was that I metioned in my listing that I would not take credit card payments thru Paypal (thier proprietary payment service). I said I would take cash payments thru Paypal, but not credit. Well they said if I'm going to take Paypal, I have to take it all, cash and credit. Well of course they take a percentage out of the credit payments, so you can see why I don't want to take credit and you can also see why they don't want me to say that. Uggg. So, I'm saying good bye to eBay and I'll have to either keep my horses or sell them elsewhere.

Here are some of the model horses I was going to sell (I know you don't really care, but it looks cooler to have pics in your post!):

And we're off

So I s'pose I'll put something up here for everyone to reed, because the three or four of you checking the blog circuit are really giving us a hard time... (I spelled read wrong just for the teachers who I know are going to reed this)

So I'll describe our weekend. it doesn't really have a theme or anything (like the weekend of ...), it was just a weekend.

Okay, lets call it THE WEEKEND OF MAXIMUM AWESOMENESS. It wasn't really that awesome, but you gots to have attention grabbers, people... Marketing, you know.

I have half day fridays at my spectacular job, so my weekend starts at noon on Fridays (yeahhh). The past few weeks that half day has been spent on home improvement/maintenance. Let me demonstrate my semi-okay skills with a before and after shot of our wood floors. When we pulled up the carpet about 2 years ago, we found this spot where someone mickey-moused a plywood cover over an old floor heater, and put a piece of particleboard over the step. For two years we've been staring at that spot from the couch saying "yep, we should do something about that". Well its finally been done. Almost. Check it out (I still need to finish the nosing piece and paint the riser before its really done - we'll see how long it takes to get to that). Basically I say my skills are semi-okay because if I was telling someone else to do it, I would have had them rip up more of the floor and stagger the new boards to make it less obvious. But since it was me, and it was really hard and stuff, I just patched the missing sections.





Saturday, we went to my friend Alan's wedding in Huntington Beach. Beautiful day, awesome spot for a wedding ceremony - in a courtyard of the new Hyatt overlooking the ocean... Who knew Hungtington beach could be so resort-y? Too bad we didn't bring a camera... you could have seen how cool it was. Anyway, that was a little strange because it was like a reunion of everyone from my old firm at the time I was there. All the principals, and 5 or 6 friends (almost all who had since left the firm). So that was fun. It was good to see everybody again. Nobody got hurt.

Sunday was back to the home improvement/maintenance thing. Jenna took over the inside while I patched a bunch of cracks in the garage slab to test out my patching skills before I tackle the more visible driveway and patio. Then I patched a big hole under the sink. I'm really into patching things as you can see. You can call me Patchy the Patcher if you like, but I probably won't respond.

And that's about it. We watched this snowboarding film last night "First Descent" that made me not really want to go backcountry freeriding in Alaska, 'cause I might die. It looked like fun, though. I think I'll stick to going just off the trail at the resorts and pretending that I'm freeriding in the Alaskan backcountry.

So there you go people. A post from the Hoskinsons. Mostly about me though, I'll have to work on that.

Testing 1,2,3

yes, this is just another test. I have nothing of interest at all to say...(just wanted to test out the different things you can do...)

this is a "block quote" i wonder how long it will go before it moves to the next line, and what will happen when it does move to the next line. there i guess i got my answer, neat-o.

And this is jay's picture from his 1990 yearbook. Sweet - i married one cool dude!