Maui Jim

It’s always great to come home to Chicago!!! I look forward to this event every year. It’s always guaranteed to be a great event — a fantastic facility, great footing, friends and family. We had a really easy drive to Chicago, we drove through the night, avoided rush hour traffic and made it in 12 1/2 hours. We arrived in the morning and turned the horses out (jack and Arthur got to stay at my parent’s house, Claire’s pony went to the Quinn’s next door, and Dusty stayed with his pasture buddy, Peekachu, at the McMorriss’s house). We (the girls and I) laid out by the pool in the afternoon and then we went out for a waterski with the family. My cousin, Cathy, her three kids and my Aunt Doris (aka Rusty) where visiting for the week so it was an extra special visit with the fam! Waterski pictures will be added to a future post as Katlyn has not sent them to me yet — hint hint! All the girls were fabulous and got up straight away. On Tuesday we took the horses over to the Barrington Riding Center — my old stomping grounds — and rode out in the Forest Preserve. The new xc courses look fantastic!!! I feel so blessed to have grown up in such a special equestrian community. On Wednesday, we took the horses over to Maui Jim in the morning to ride in the show rings, and then brought them all back home to be turned out again overnight. The rest of Wednesday was spent setting up for a huge cocktail party/fundraiser for my fall competitions in Europe. I am planning on taking Arthur to Burghley CCI4* (in England) and Burger to Pau CCI4* (in France). These trips are going to be sooooooo expensive x 1000000000000000!!! I, again, feel so blessed for my amazing friends and family here in Chicago that want to help make dreams into a reality. I cannot thank everyone enough for believing in me and standing by me through all the years. I will have a post dedicated to this fundraiser in the near future, so keep checking in — just waiting on pictures!!! (hint hint… katlyn!) Thursday we officially moved into the show. On Friday, Dusty did his dressage and XC (fabulous for both), Arthur did his dressage (fabulous, finished 2nd) and Jack did his dressage (again, fabulous, finishing 2nd). Saturday was XC day for Arthur and Jack. Arthur & I had a collectively huge blonde moment, by running past the second fence in attempt to start out a little faster than we usually do…. uggh!! Other than that (and a twisty corner) he made easy work of the course. Jack got the HUGE smiley face sticker of the day. It was the most rideable xc round we have had to date. I didn’t even think about making time, because I am still working on his listening skills. For this reason we had a lot of xc time penalties which dropped us down in the placings. I was over the moon with his performance and I look forward to great things from Jack in the future. On Sunday all three of my horse did their showjumping. Arthur and Jack were foot perfect in their rounds. I am so thrilled with the improvement I have made in the show jumping and cannot thank Katie Prudent and Jan Byyny for all the help they have given me!!! Unfortunately Dusty and I did not have a good show jump round. He was winning by a lot and then we had a rail and a stop. I was beating myself up over this as he is such a fabulous pony and his owner, Nancy Winter, was there watching him. He is so smart and safe that he knew when we jumped awkwardly into the last combination,he was definitely safer not attempting the last element. He came back and popped through it perfectly…. bummer. What a good boy he is and we will meiss him terribly this fall while he is hunting with Nancy. We did pick up a new pony, Connor, from Nancy. He looks like a ton of fun, but he needs to spend some time getting on and off the trailer as it took us about 45 min to load him!!! We had a REALLY long trip home as I was too heavy to go on the Ohio Tollroad, so we had to go a very long route home and then we had a blowout… bummer. We did finally make it home after 18 hours!!!!! All the horses traveled very well and were happy to be turned out again!!!