Making the News

Our sweetheart is one blessed and lucky girl: she will be featured with her trainer, Heather Jayne-Hill and other riders at Del Lago in a local newspaper in North Houston. Here are a couple of her snapshots that will be published in the Community Impact. We can't wait for the newspaper to come out!

Below is cute Ella on Boudraux hard at work. That day they hacked (walk/trot) for an hour with no break before spending another twenty minutes jumping cross-rails. This girl has passion and an incredible stamina. (Now, don't ask her how her little thighs feel!)

Here with Heather of Heatherton Show Hunters and Jumpers and Ramon Arizmendi of Del Lago:

Heather's and Ramon's (who was introduced to us by Heather), dedication, passion, and professionalism are remarkable. I hope that Ella will be riding with Heather for a long, long time.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, we're getting all excited and hard at work about the FARE (Food Allergy) walk in September and preparing for a little fundraiser for that in a couple of weeks. We will be baking and selling allergen-free (dairy-free, nut-free, and gluten-free) cupcakes and cookies to our neighbors and local friends on our front lawn. We've submitted a request for permission to hold a fundraiser at H.E.B's front store and waiting for hear back from their corporate office about approval. At any rate, we'll be hosting the cupcake fundraiser at our home this Saturday. In case, they approve it, we'll do another one at H.E.B. We love baking and for a great cause, such as this, I'll bake galore!! A couple of weeks ago, I was asked for an interview in our Sugar Land local newspaper, to discuss the impact of food allergies on our family. It was a good opportunity to get the word out about the FARE walk and in general, about our struggles as well as little successes with managing food allergies, as well as creating awareness in the community and at school. The interview will be published next week in the Sugar Land News. It does break my heart every time I have to talk about this, in private or in public but I have to do it for Ella and all other children like her. I never thought that food would be such an issue to us, to her, but I always find comfort in counting our blessings, her blessings, and the fact that it could be a lot worse. She is strong and healthy, even if her asthma and (other) allergies are giving her a run for her money lately. She's a lot more mature for her years and that gives me comfort that she will watch carefully for herself when she's out there in the world. (This is especially hard after getting the recent tragic news of a beautiful teenagers who passed away from a peanut allergic reaction. How terribly sad... .)

Marketing campaign

This is what it feels like and boy, it's exciting! I've been working on these during my lunch break today and I'm excited that Ella wants to do a cupcake stand to raise money for the FARE Walk.  I haven't received much support through the website yet so I think this will be a nice way to get the word out and hopefully raise some money for research and education. We might look into doing this at our local grocery store, we'll see. For now, I'm planning it on our driveway.

These will be the posters around the stand.

With the Walk being on Sept 7th, there's not much time left. Our fundraiser is in two weeks.

I need to find the time to spill out the latest updates. We moved and what an enormous of work that was and still is, and a few other things. Life is great, just too busy for me sometimes to keep up with it.  :)

Riding with passion

That's Ella. She never gets tired. Rides like a champ. Mom and dad shoot video after video, and clap when those jumps are perfected, and of course shoot another video! :)

She's been making great progress and this past weekend jumped her first 1 foot line jump along with cross-rails. She's been blessed to ride some really nice ponies. Here she is aboard Boudraux and Samson. Heather has introduced us to a good friend of her, also in the equestrian field, who's active in the show jumping arena and has a barn about an hour away from us. We get to go every once in a while. It is a great treat for Ella to ride really nice ponies and have the jumper arena pretty much all to herself. At Sienna she only gets that opportunity once a week. We are extremely excited about her progress and Heather sees a future champ in her. We'll see;for now all we know is that she LOVES to ride and she has a special talent for it.

With Roland, the Gentle Giant, a 19 hands beautiful horse, and future Grand Prix horse.

Cross-rails on Boudraux at Del Lago:

 Hacking Remi at Sienna.

Cooling off an overheated Frenchie at Sienna.

Remi loving daddy.

 Playing:

 (We have a little funny story about this one as we got him in the arena to play and stood there expecting him to start playing... and he would just hang out with us. Then Heather showed us how you get him to play. You use a whip on the ground to get him going and then he'll have his fun, trotting, galloping, and bucking. It is really cool to see how energy he has.)

Loving the water fountain:

First time jumping on Boudraux:

With Samson:

Present and future champions (both horse and folk) :)

The yummy lemon cake we whipped together before going to Magnolia yesterday. It's really a miracle that we were able to make this considering that 90% of our kitchen is packed up. Yes, we We were going to move into our new place... this weekend but some very not nice sellers did something not very nice and our closing date was pushed out. Oh well!

 Introduced to a very beautiful filly:

 That nice stubby Samson again:

 (By the way, Ella loves her new haircut! We love it too, so cute!)

And she loves the cake we made today! Yes, another cake. Just because!

(I just sent this to Heather and I'm sure Ramon and her will get a kick out of it.) 

A cause near and dear to us

Last year's FAAN Allergy Walk.

I'm starting my fund raising efforts early this year. Take a look and and make a little donation if you. http://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=1061763&supId=374404329&extSiteType=1

And if you cannot, please take the time and read about food allergies and how you can help educate others to keep these children safe and included at www.foodallergies.org.

We love summer

How can you not when you're only 45 minutes away from the beach? Don't mind the heat much, nor the humidity, we love the sunny hot days. So last Sunday after church, we packed our beach bags, cooler, and headed out to Galveston. We had a great time. First stop was Palm Beach at Moody Gardens. Ella had a blast on the lazy river, water slides, and playing in the sand. We were there for quite a while with no time left to stop by Stewart Beach, our regular beach stop-over.

At the water dump!!

Next was the Galveston Historical Pier. The sunset and breeze were wonderful. We didn't get to hang out there for too long but long enough to take a bike ride and enjoy the sunset. We are going back soon, that's for sure.

 Otherwise, we've been developing a new family pastime: golfing, well don't (yet) go golfing together but we do go to the driving range together.

Ella's getting quite good. She has a nice long and straight driver, and doing well with her irons too. I am a "phenomena." Ha, ha! I've been hitting straight and long balls like there's nobody's business.

While I enjoy this newly found hobby, my favorite part is still to watch these two swing side by side.

(Hello "triceps-eratops",he-he!)

With the Master.

And speaking of Master's, Rishi won 2nd place at The Houston Postal Customer Council Tournament just a couple of weeks back. Here is his very shinny plaque. We are so proud of him.

Somebody's starting to like and take "selfies." :)

How Ella imagines her baptismal day. She gave a beautiful talk in Primary on Baptism this past Sunday. She did such an excellent job!!

My newly discovered culinary love: baked/roasted butternut squash.

Oil painting on canvas. Not too shabby for a first time. But oil is so hard to paint with. Next time, I'll have her use acrylic.

Beautiful and creative artist!!!

At the Funplex with her school friend.

The traditional after-church picture. She is wearing an old old chocker of mine. She was quite pleased to receive compliments because of it.

This is another delectable Hrishi has made for lunch on Sunday: clams!! He is the chef, I tell ya'! They were delicious and packed with goodness (and veggies.)

And life wouldn't be complete without Remi. We love him more and more every day.