Gene-O has navicular.   And I know this isn’t news to most of you, but to those of you who haven’t heard, I’ll elaborate.

Here’s the description. If you don’t care about the details, skip to the next paragraph. J  Navicular happens in the front feet, and it’s - as far as anyone knows – incurable.   It can be hereditary, but the foal won’t be born with it; usually, it appears when the horse is around seven years old, as a kind of lameness that comes and goes. Then as the horse gets older, the “lameness” progressively gets worse.

The syndrome itself, has to do with the navicular bone.   When the foot is placed upon the ground, the weight forces the navicular bone back against the tendon. Horses with small feet have less area over which to distribute concussion and weight; therefore, more pressure is placed upon the navicular bone.  

Gene-O’s almost 12 years old, and as you may have guessed, he’s getting to the worst stages.  There are things you can do to take the pain away (i.e. corrective shoeing or surgery to remove the nerves), but neither one of those takes away the problem, and no matter what you do, it will keep getting worse.   My boss, and friend, Christy says that she’s had more than one horses of hers with navicular. She chose to do neither of the pain-solvers because all it would do is possibly cause more dangerous problems. 

I tend to agree with her, and even thought it’s extremely hard for me to watch him in pain, I’m just gonna let Gene-O live the rest of his life as fun and carefree as possible.

And, to tell you the truth, I’m scared to death.  I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him; and I know that sounds dramatic, but I’m sure you horse lovers out there can identify with me.   

Some nights I’ll cry myself to sleep, praying that God could somehow miraculously heal Gene-O.      Eventually, I know, he will have to put out of his pain….but I selfishly want to keep him to myself as long as possible and do anything if it means he’s not in pain and he can stay in my life longer.

Pray for me. This is probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.  I’m praying ardently that God would help me through this…yet it’s still hard to trust him when he’s the one that allowed this to happen.  

My feelings are very mixed up right now…please, please pray.

Wow....I actually kept my word! I think I'm gonna give myself a pat on the back...:)  Ok it's done. :p lol

Well I promised yall I'd put some pics up of Jolie's graduation party....I'll be doing those plus some other ones.

This is Mom and Joelle (obviously) with the cake...we only had one cake but apparantly it went around cause we didn't get any complaints. :D

Joelle and Katie Brainard.......Katie made her dress.

I was so excited to see Tom Bestland there...he's the one that got me to start going to camp...I owe him a lot :)

Heidi and Sam Halverson...you can tell they're siblings :p

Savy, Joelle, and Savy's sister, Tasha.....letting the stress out :D

We're actually to Heidi's graduation party now....this is Alex Brainard and Joelle

Heidi helped Jolie out a lot for her grad party, so Joelle returned the favor.

Isaac Jenson and Joelle

Heidi took Savy horse-back riding after the party had died down....such fun!!!

that afternoon, we went to Perham to a send-off party for Danielle (Dano) Refsland and Katherine Knuttila for the Miss Minnesota pageant....Savy got over-excited ;D

This is Dano....for her talent she's doing a speach dramatization thing....

Both girls did their whole thing with the different outfits included for us....it was like a dress rehearsal for them.

Katherine did a piano piece....I think she'll do very well...she's very poised and does well on stage.

last week I found a monarch butterfly that Boots had attacked.. it was just fluttering helplessly on the ground............ :(  Anyways, I decided to take a picture of it....it was really pretty. :)

That's all for now....I'll be at camp this week so I can't promise you anything soon...but we'll see.

peace out.

Glori

Ok, soooo everybody has been getting after me to post a new entry since after all,I haven't updated since...uhhhh the beginning of March I think...? :p

welll...honestly I really haven't been doing anything exciting...basically hanging out with friends a lot (nothing you've never seen before) and just chillin'...........I do however, have some really old pics that I forgot to post for you guys...:-/  I have no idea why,but I never posted anything of spring break when the boys were here!   I have no idea why...      aaaand even though it's...what? four months later?! lol I figured I have nothing else to post,sooooo here you go!

WAIT!!! first,here are a couple -two to be exact- random pics that I took this spring...

This is my 12 yr old sis, Ruth and my 18 yr old sis, Joelle...who just graduated this spring,aaaand I will be sure to post those for yall...hopefully within th next week!

This is Joelle and Savanah...Savanah (or savy as I like to call her) is gonna be gone this summer so I won't see here till like...this fall!  I'll miss ya girl! :D

These are all the boys that came to visit....(from left to right) My youngest (yet older than me) bro, Anders -from TX; Chris -from TN; Nathan -from TN; Dustin -from TN; and My middle (yet again,older than me) bro,Leif...Chris Nathan, and Dustin are room mates with Leif.

Out playing football on their first full day here...

Anders - jumping the drift...awesome! :D

ummmmmm just a little creepy...the werewolf and his mistress....huh?????

Dustin and Anders - stir crazy

Chris and Joelle-looking a little dazed...hehe

Savy!!!

Dustin, on Andrew Invalson's snowmobile

Leif, swinging in the barn...

Dustin and Chris absolutely LOVE basketball, so they went a few times in the week they were here, to play...this is Chris and Savy - the game is on! lol

they pretty much wooped (by a huge margin) the many teams they challenged here...:D

the night before they left everyone went out for a huge snowball fight...jolie got beat! lol

the southern boys did NOT expect to get beat up by us northern girls!!!

we also took the boys skiing in the middle of the week...this is Dustin and Nathan

Anders...he and chris snowboarded the whole time...Dustin tried,but then went back to skis.

Jolie and Leif...pink from the cold,yet having a blast!!!!

Well that's all for now...check back later in the week...maybe I'll have something more recent put up!

peace out.

<3 glori

Yay!!! I’m back again!!! – Back from spring break, that is............................................

Ok, so now for the explanation... My brother, Leif told the family he was coming up to MN for spring break with at least two, possible all three of his roommates (Dustin, Nathan, and Chris)!  I was super excited, when I heard; and every morning when I woke up I would say: “10 more days till the boys come!” and so on...

Finally the day came and I was so excited all day that I could barely clean (which was what I was supposed to be doing)!  At about 10:00 (pm), we saw the headlights at the end of the driveway... they were here! Leif was the first one to come through the door, and of course he was smothered in hugs and kisses! :-p Then after a little bit, Nathan came through the door shivering like a leaf!!! Then a little bit after that Dustin and Chris joined us in the warm house... We were all introducing ourselves, exchanging names, etc. when my other brother Anders came through the door!!! My mom literally screamed, and I just looked... speechless! None of the family had known that Anders was planning on coming so it was like a HUGE surprise!  It turns out it was kind of a last minute thing...                           so.......... anyway, that was Saturday night.

On Sunday morning, we all got up for church, and the boys got introduced to everybody else. 

After church, the boys went shopping for any snow gear that they hadn’t gotten down south; then we all went with some friends to the biggest sliding hill in Detroit Lakes.  It was a blast!!!

On Monday, we went to the community center to play ball and exercise.  That night, we all just kind of chilled, and didn’t go to bed till about 2:00 am.

On Tuesday, a few of us went to the community center again; then came home in the afternoon and played video games, watched movies, etc...

On Wednesday, everyone pretty much stayed home most of the day; In the afternoon, Nathan and Chris both rode Gene-O! They both loved it from what they told me, and also from what I could see, they were both naturals; even though neither of them had ever ridden before (or at least not since they were little; they never told me for sure)! Then later in the evening the guys went to Fargo to hang out with and do a ‘long time, no see’ thing with some friends.

On Thursday we went skiing, and had an absolute blast!!! It was awesome!  We got there at about 1 pm and were skiing/snowboarding till about 9 pm.

Friday was kind of a downer day, because everyone knew that the boys were leaving the next morning... we basically stayed home the whole day, and then had the church over to say goodbye; at about 8pm we all went outside to have a snowball fight! We came back in a little after 9:30. Most of the people left between 10 and midnight... except for a few of us who tried to stay up all night but ended up going to bed everywhere between 1 and 5. We woke up at 7:30 on Saturday morning and helped the boys pack; they left at about 8:30. When the little van drove down the driveway, I honestly felt like crying!  It was so disappointing, cause we had had school off, and had been having fun all week! For me, it was like having five “big brothers” around the house, and now they were gone and all of a sudden we had to start real life again.    Our whole family was going through huge withdrawal... the boys called later in the afternoon on Saturday, and said that everyone in the van was extremely depressed, and wanted to turn around and spend another week here.   It felt good to hear them say that cause then we knew they had just as amazing of a time as we did! lol!!!

So anyway, here I am on a boring old Tuesday... I seriously go on the computer every day just to look at pictures and keep the memories as vivid as possible in my head.

Ok, ok, I know I’m being depressing! Honestly I’m getting over the withdrawal part, but them being here made me really realize how much I miss all my siblings, and how I would give up just about anything to go down there right now... even if it was just for a day!!!

I’ve got pics of the week on my slideshow... they’re towards the beginning, so if you haven’t seen them, just ‘refresh’ the page and watch from the beginning.

Enjoy!...    I did!

Serendipity

Well, it’s official!!!  The filly’s name is Serendipity (shorter nickname, Tibby)!!!!

I'd gotten suggestions from a couple of people to just keep the original one that I had thought of, and I didn’t get any other suggestions; so I decided it’s the perfect name for her... my family had already started calling her Serendipity, even though I kept telling them ‘it’s not decided yet!’ Somehow, I guess they knew that that would end up as her name no matter how many suggestions I got!!!... 8-)

It actually fits her very well... It’s just that I’m so indecisive that I didn’t want to make her name final until every single other name possible had run through my head!

What’ll be really exciting is when she actually starts responding to her name!!