Burrrrr!!!! It's COLD inside!!!!

OMG! The dog trainer was right! I'm not sure if it was the walk alone, or the combination of the walk plus the training class, but one or both certainly had a positive effect! Riley fell asleep on the couch before I was ready to go to bed. He eventually woke and climbed onto the bed with me but didn't wake me up until 6 a.m.! Yippee!!!! He has been waking me in the middle of the night (2 am-ish and staying awake for about 30 minutes). Guess the training and mile walk wore him out enough to sleep through the night! And of course, now I'm much better rested (and happier) as well.

I dropped the pups off at Funny Bones (kennel) at 8:45 a.m. and then picked up Kyra from Claudette at 9:30 a.m. And off we went to Madison, GA, to the Southern Cross Guest Ranch for our mini-spring-break-vacation. Because I made reservations only two weeks ago, we ended up in the Navajo room (the only room they had available at the time that I made reservations). When I made reservations, they only had one room available for one night, but thankfully there was a cancellation and we were able to stay two nights. Kyra would have loved to stay three, but that's the down-side of working out custody arrangements on a month-by-month basis and therefore, not knowing way in advance when she would definitely be with me.

We had a great lunch at the Ranch and then walked down to the stables to get in line for horse assignments. This is our fourth visit to the ranch and Kyra's favorite horse is "Ruby". She had her heart set on riding Ruby. But, another little girl (a year younger than Kyra), also loved Ruby and was ahead of us in line. So, Kyra had to ride another horse instead. Kyra wasn't thrilled, but she wasn't too sad either since we had talked on the drive there about how it might be fun to try different horses. We had a 2 hour walk only ride with Natalie as our guide. It was walk only because it had rained so much lately that the trails were still very muddy/slick. Although Kyra wanted to canter, I was happy with walking on our first ride. I rode Sally, who had a caved in forehead which resulted from a run-in with another horse years ago. Sally was sweet and a good walker. Now that I'm typing this two days later, I can't recall the name of the horse that Kyra rode, other than it wasn't Ruby... After the ride, Kyra asked if we could get up early on Tuesday and eat breakfast quickly, so she could get to the stables before the other little girl in the morning so she would be able to ride Ruby. I told her yes, but there was a chance the other girl would beat her there and she should be grateful to be riding any horse, if it turns out the other girl gets Ruby.

When I made reservations, Monica warned me that the Navajo room was on the bottom floor with only a full-size bed, large bathroom, and a very small window. I told her that was fine because we would only spend a minimal amount of time in the room anyway. As it turned out, Kyra LOVED the room because of the small window! I'm not sure if the stuffed bunny was on the bed because of Easter, or just because they usually put a stuffed animal in each room and ours turned out to be the bunny, but we appreciated it none-the-less.

The main memory of the day occurred in the evening. After dinner, we returned to our room and Kyra climbed up into the small window box! She said she wanted to sleep there, so I gave her a pillow. I warned her that she better not fall out and break my face since I would be sleeping on the bed below her... While she was up there, she asked if she could open the window. It was warm in our room, without a thermostat controller, so I told her she was welcome to if she could open it. She had no problem opening the window and we enjoyed the cool breeze of extremely fresh, crisp air for a little while. This is a very cold spring day (40s) and after having the window open for about an hour it became quite brisk, so I asked Kyra to close the window. She couldn't... So then I tried... and couldn't either... OH NO!!!! By this point, the main office was closed, so we were stuck with an open window with cold air blowing in! I searched the dresser and closet for extra blankets, with no such luck. We stuffed two small decorative pillows against the opening to reduce the airflow and cuddled close under the covers of the full-sized bed to go to sleep. I teased her for hours about getting the window stuck in the open position and the possibility of snow blowing in through the window during the night. We both laughed hard about it. Thankfully the heater was cranked higher than I would have liked, and we had no option but to snuggle close in the one full-sized bed, so it worked out okay.