2023 Wrap Up: May - August

Continuing a look back at 2023, today we remember the middle part of the year. And it was a very busy time!

May, 2023

Live show Indy Blooms is held just south of my home, so of course I invited some of the GLC crew to stay with me while they were in Indiana attending the show.

We headed out to the barn to visit the horses, of course. (L to R: Barn Buddy Kesley, Ellen Vogel, Steff Bodamer, and Liz Cory.)

I didn't show but Liz was showing as well as judging so I sat at her table and helped as needed. 

 

The end of May meant a lot of graduation parties. MaryCate made me this little painting I am holding when she was in 5th grade. I still have it displayed in my office and brought it to her party to show her.

Daniel and Nikki are siblings and were both in my class as 4th and 5th graders. She's a grad student at Purdue in Bioengineering, he's studying Mathematics and is a auctioneer on the side!)

June, 2023

Summer got off to a good start. The weather was lovely and the pastures were lush.

Angelina, another former student, texted me invited me to go to lunch with her. We also visited the horses. Angelina was horsey when she was in 4th and 5th grade and that has continued into adulthood. 

Breyer announced the BreyerFest virtual workshops in June and I could finally share that I had been asked to teach another one for them, this time on making show aprons.

I was pleased to wear the 2023 BreyerFest volunteer shirt, even if I did BreyerFest virtually myself.

I did well at Clover Classic, another new show in Indiana that was close to my home.

Leslie joined me - her first live show since we were kids in elementary school and holding them with our carpet herds! Some of the models in my collection had been hers and she was thrilled to see them win a few ribbons.

July, 2023

July brought a lot of family into town for visits including Beach Son Kyle.

He came for an extended visit - since he is unable to get away often, having him here for a couple of weeks was awesome! Mila, Lukie, and Ian loved his Dad jokes. (So did I.)

 

We took a lot of photos while he was with us. (Cole, Curt, Kyle, Todd.)

My adult children (minus Mountain Mama Jessica who was in the final weeks of preparing for Matilda.) Cole, Curt, Lisa, Kyle, and Sarah.

Lisa's friend Frank came up from North Carolina for a visit, too. Craig and I enjoyed meeting him.

I was thrilled to be invited to former student Madeline's wedding in July.

Not only was I her teacher for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, but when she was doing her own teacher training at Purdue University, she worked as an aide in my classroom. What an honor to be invited to her wedding!

Of course, July means BreyerFest!

I took a screen shot of the ad they did for my virtual workshop for my records. This was my third BreyerFest workshop, at the time I was planning the November Collectors Club workshop on snow globes, I'd stewarded my second BreyerFest Boot Camp, and I'd written two articles for Breyer that were published elsewhere. It was time to put together a bit of a resume to track what I was doing for Breyer.

Horse ears, anyone? If I am doing virtual BreyerFest,  I have a tradition of making a special visit to "the horse park." I happened to perfectly catch Sultanna standing behind me like this.

August, 2023

Hawkeye Sarah completed a second Masters degree, this one in Public Health. So proud of you, Sarah!

On their way home from a camping trip with family, Liz and her husband Sam stopped by to have lunch.

They also brought me a very special model that Liz had found at BreyerFest, a beautifully shaded Alabaster 5 Gaiter with black eyes. I have the red eyed version, but have been looking for the black eyed for several decades.

Where Liz found it makes it even more special to me. It came out of Simone Smiljanic's collection. Simone is one of the four "hobby mothers," and she was also a dear friend of mine.

More family fun (in the category of "boys will be boys...)

Vanessa is trying to snap some photos of the kids and Curt and Kyle were miming (Mimeing?) having a discussion to make her laugh. She did her best to ignore them but you can see that smile on her face. (It really was pretty hilarious; it elicited good smiles from the cousins for the pictures, too.)

Kyle's family joined him for a few days and it was good to have them here. L to R: Lukie, Addie, Melissa, Cory, Mila, Braden, Whitney, and Ian.

In late July, Craig and I hopped aboard Amtrak and headed out to the Rocky Mountains to visit Mountain Mama Jessica and her family.

If you have never gone on an extended train trip, put it on your bucket list. It's fun and you get to see scenery that cannot be accessed by car.

We went out for a visit, but we also went out to see three performances of the musical, Matilda.

Jessica has a long resume of shows she has done, but operas and musicals are her specialty. She invited her family to audition along with her, and they all received parts!

Titan got one of the leads.

He played Nigel, the supposedly narcoleptic boy

 

who is dubbed that when Matilda, thinking quickly, "explains" his behavior and rescues him from the evil headmistress, Ms. Trunchbull.

I knew I would be seeing a lot of Titan, but Jessica surprised me - she didn't tell me that she played more than one role in the musical.

She played the younger evil Ms. Trunchbull in all the flashback scenes!

Every time she came onstage, you wanted to boo and hiss at her, she was so mean and rude.

Offstage, though, both the flashback and the real Ms. Trunchull (both of whom were named Jessica) were kind ladies. The kids in the cast would make them bracelets, draw them pictures, and follow them around during rehearsals.

Like Jessica, Andrew filled multiple roles, too. He skateboarded across the stage in one scene, played a dad, a professor, and here he is a member of the Russian mafia arresting Matilda's dad for theft.

Cambria did not have a speaking role, but as a member of Matilda's class, was onstage as much as Titan.

She did get spanked by Ms. Trunchbull for not following directions

and she danced her heart out with the full cast of kids. Jessica told me that the older kids in the cast were super good to the younger ones and really liked them. That feeling was mutual as you can see from their faces!

All too soon our time in Utah was done and Craig and I boarded the train for home.

Such a busy summer! Stay 'tooned for one last wrap up post.

Gone to the Dogs

I am over at Teacher Daughter Lisa's home dogsitting and can't write this morning. I'll be back tomorrow with more of the 2023 review. 

In the meantime, here are two pictures from our visit to Santaquin, Utah in July to see Mountain Mama Jessica and her family perform in Matilda.

Stay 'tooned!

2022 Wrap Up: January - April

It's that time of year - my annual review of what happened during 2023.  It's been a busy year, a horsey one, and a non horsey one. We've had some major challenges and we've had some of the best ever days. Take a look back with me.

December, 2022 

While we are looking at 2023, one of the biggest challenges I faced in 2023 actually began in December of 2022. Craig and I were getting ready to go out to dinner to celebrate our wedding anniversary, when suddenly my face went numb, my hands went numb, and I had a crushing headache.

After eight hours in the emergency room and a multitude of tests, the doctors had no answers.

As 2023 proceeded, I began having slurred speech, an inability to write or type, more of the debilitating headaches, and numbness throughout my body, all of which were happening on a daily basis. Neurologists still could not explain what was causing these symptoms or why. 

In July, almost all the symptoms stopped and I regained most of my functions back although my typing is still very poor. (You should see these blog drafts - they need so many corrections to be readable!) I still get the occasional migraine, but the migraines are nothing compared to those awful headaches I was having.

January, 2023

Our second challenge of the year and it was only January - the loss of James on December 22. Memorial services were held on January 6.

Lisa was a huge support to James' children and helped his oldest daughter make the funeral arrangements and clean out her father's apartment.

James' passing wasn't the only person we mourned. Linda Walter, one of the four "hobby mothers", also passed away on January 17.

This is a participant key from a 1970s photo show list of results. My name (Lynn Martin) is just above Linda's. Linda did a lot to connect the model horse hobby with her Model Horse Showers Journal. She and I corresponded so much, I still have her mailing address memorized.

February, 2023 

February is when model horse live shows begin ratcheting up after the short holiday/winter break. I'm always interested in hobby history, so I did a lot of research into the model horse hobby and showing in Indiana when the hobby was in its infancy. Surprised at just how much had been happening back then, and as someone who was there when it was, I named the seventeen post series, "Indiana, a Hotbed of Showing."  Because it really was.

Early tack still in my collection that dates back to the 1960s.

A list of shows for 2023 in the state - I missed at least one that I know of.

March, 2023

Big news for Misty of Chincoteague lovers - a developer wanted to buy the old Beebe Ranch, home of Misty, and build condos and apartments on it.

Marguerite Henry and Misty

About $625,000 was needed to save the ranch. The hobby went into action, people on the island went into action, and so did horse lovers and book lovers all over the world.

Years ago, Marguerite Henry, Peter Stone, and Rebecca and John Giusti founded The Misty of Chincoteague Foundation and Liz Cory is president and I am secretary. Peter, John, and Rebecca are still board members along with several other people. We, too, went into action to help save the ranch. And to the delight of people worldwide, the Beebe Ranch was saved.

Also in March and to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Secretariat's Triple Crown win, the Vintage Club offered a lovely Classic Secretariat in a dark chestnut. 50 pieces were randomly sent out in gold charm, to match the gold charm Secretariat released in 1990.

I was astounded and very happy to discover that I was one of the gold charm recipients!

March always brings a big living history event in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

Lisa and I attended and set up a booth to sell my clothing, beeswax ornaments, and other things.

I reconnected with my dear friend and fellow horse lover, Carol (who interprets an indentured servant.) Carol and her husband John have Fjords and so between our love of history and horses, Carol and I always have a lot to talk about. 

Carol is also a teacher like Lisa and me, and so with so much in common, we always look forward to seeing her at events.

Finally, I served as a steward for Breyer's Boot Camp, a BreyerFest preparation for people new to the hobby and live or photo showing. 

March was a very busy month!

April, 2023

Spring in the midwest means severe weather, and there was a large outbreak of tornados in April.

This torndo went south of Lafayette and passed near where Curt and Vanessa live. That area has had its share of tornados; Mintonye, the kids' elementary school, was hit by a tornado and closed for a year while Southwestern Middle School, next door to Mintonye, took a harder hit and was shut down for more than two years.

Here's a video of the two schools and their damage. Thank goodness the tornado hit on the weekend and not a school day!

And here is a video of the gym walls just peeling away taken by security cameras as that tornado hit. (Sorry about the ad, you can skip it after a few moments.)

There are two huge wind farms just north of the barn. (I can see the turbines spinning from the north pastures.) 

They took a hard hit during that night of tornados popping up all over the area.

We were lucky - the tornados went north and south of our home.

Our family in Iowa City had a narrow miss.

Granddaughter Trinity was at work driving the Cambus on the campus of the University of Iowa where she is a student. A tornado was approaching (and later severely damaged a portion of town) and so she pulled over, offloaded her riders, and led them into a nearby building where they took shelter.

Trin filled out her daily report while sheltering in the basement.

If I had this report, I'd frame it! Her illustration makes me smile.

April may have started with a lot of storms, but things settled down and as the weather warmed up (and the mud dried), I was able to go see my girl more frequently.

She always comes right up to see me, nickering as she comes, and then she follows me everywhere.

Hot on her heels are usually Sultanna and Two Socks who compete with Abby for my attention.

But Abby is the herd alpha and sorts them out if she needs to. I sure love my girl, and on April 27, she and I celebrated eleven years together!

Next up? May though August. Stay 'tooned!