The Barn

The barn is totally cute! Has stalls for 5 horses (well, 7 if you count the mini ponies), 3 with runs and 2 without but the stalls themselves are a tad bigger. The 'Stallgasse' (hallway or so) looks like Grandma's house, with decoration on the walls and such. Just all very private and cute.

This is the hallway. The left real door in the back is the tack/feed room, Tempo is in cross ties, to the right there are 5 stall doors with 3 of them occupied by horses (Thunder, Melody, Dakota) one by the many chickens and one shared by the minis). The other 3 indoor stalls without a run are behind me, one is used permanently for Kate's 2 dogs, and the other two are currently occupied with man's toys...

Here the minis, Sqwirt to the left and I-have-no-idea-of-his-name on the right.

Their hay gets thrown out of the window

This is Joey, the 30 year old brown donkey/jack or whatever. His braying is hilarious when he starts to do it! Sounds like a guy from the Swiss Alps blowing into one of this  long horns a la Ricola!

The runs from the backside of the barn.

Kate doing Thunder's hooves

The two indoor stalls with the dog's stall (with a gate) to the right.

Chickens!

My Mom taking a picture of Dakota, the horse of the barn owner (she ownes the donkey Joey and this horse, her other 2 horses in the indoor stalls both died in January of colic)

on the right the tack room door, the middle has a cut out for utensils like brooms and such and the water faucet. The horses do not have automatic waterers, they are having the old fashioned buckets that we rinse out daily and fill up new

One of the minis peeking out of their extra cut out deep door

The donkey who just got shaved (he has cushions syndrom so he looks shaggy anyway)

Kate

Kate is the owner of the Arab gelding Tempo, Thunder, and two Mini ponies. She works full time and still does chores in the barn like buying and stacking hay, drag the arena, feed in the evenings, fill the buckets of the horses with water, cleaning out stalls....so of course she hardly rides yet alone two horses. So she's very happy that I take care of Thunder and that I help her here and there with her work at the barn.

Here she's jumping her Tempo over a 2.5' (about 65 cm) jump

Although the jump is little, Thunder just doesn't do jumps. When we come trotting to the obsticle, he sees it, full stops, thinks about it for a second and then lifts every leg after each other very carefully over it. It's actually quite hilarious! Even over poles laying on the ground he stopped out of a WALK to investigate, ha!

Trail Ride

Second time riding Thunder we already went on a 1.5 hour long trailride through Parker's neighborhood. The scenery was really diverse and the horses were so good!

Thunder

 I found a horse to ride!! His name is Thunder and he is 22 years old. I found him through a lady who works at Lowe's (Baumarkt) and she owns 4 horses. 2 Minis and an Arabian and this fellow. They think Thunder is a Friesian Cross but somehow he looks more like a Percheron to me. Anyway, he's being ridden English, a slow and careful mover and I love to ride him!

Daytrip to Garden of the Gods and Seven Falls

Since we moved to the south of Denver, we have a new whole area do explore! I was with the kids already last fall at Garden of the Gods but I wanted to take my Mom down again because she likes these kind of hikes. And it is now only 45 minutes away from our house and it is free....

Jonah and Olivia posing in front of the gorgeous rocks

A picture of my Mom hanging out

Bestest siblings ever

View to the main mountains but the area is bigger. Since we had it awful hot, we only walked the smalles route and were back at this point in like 35 minutes.

'Balancing Rock'

Kids holding the rock up...lol

Then we went to 'Seven Falls'. This is not far drive from 'Garden of the Gods' and 7 waterfalls are displayed. Reason I never went there alone with my kids is that I am afraid of hights and I always wondered if I can make the stairs up with the kids...but in case I could not, I  would not allow the kids to go alone of course while I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a $25 dollar entrance fee paid. So I waited for my Mom and hubby to have time and boy was I right! I turned around on like the 7th step and just took pictures of my family having fun without me. That sucked big time! I was crying a lot...

Jonah, Olivia and Papa walking the way up, my Mom is still behind me

The red person is Chris on the second stairs up

After I turned around, Chris and gang walked all the way up the stairs and took a little stroll through the beautiful forest. Picture is taken by my Mom

My Mom shot this photo on the way down. I would have simply died.

My family on the platform waving at me on their way down.

I think that spot on the brown round place at the very bottom is actually me.

Chris is the red spot at top of the stairs

On the 'Eagle's Nest', a platform where you can overlook all seven falls at the same time. You could go there with a mountain elevator or if you did go up all the stairs, it took you 45 minutes to get here. Of course I did not do the elevator either. How crazy, hugh?

At least the rest of the family had fun!