Our family has grown.

We've been "horse people" now for a number of years. That's a funny term for describing what might be medically diagnosed as a serious mental condition or illness.

Our daughter Alexis has from the point she could first express herself as an infant expressed an overwhelming love for horses. She began western riding lessons at 4 yrs and was loping and showing horses at age 5 in competition with adults.

Our venture into horse stewardship began unexpectedly several years back when Jeannine and I attended a charity auction event and they led in a beautiful paint mare and her 7 day old colt. Now known respectively as Lakota and Comet. This was our first introduction to "Friends of Horses" a south Denver horse rescue foundation. We later adopted another paint mare Sierra and her colt Scout as well as a dapple grey gelding Silver bringing us to a total of five adopted horses all previously headed to the slaughter house.

Jeannine and I were quite confident that five horses was "plenty of horses".

This winter we noticed our two mares Sierra and Lakota beginning to look a little pudgy, both we later discovered ended up with unexpected pregnancies. (I'll explain how this happens in a future post) Not knowing when the frolicking took place it was anybody's guess as to their due dates.

Sierra decided to foal 3 weeks ago in the middle of a late night blizzard and Lakota after laboring for several days foaled this last Saturday on a beautiful starry night.

I was fortunate to be able to witness this miracle when Sierra gave birth to a little fillie we named Apache. My daughter Alexis and I waited with Lakota all day and at 11:30pm the two of us decided to take a break. When we returned 45 min later we found Lakota had given birth to another little fillie we've named Dreamer.

Both moms and their fillies are doing well. This has been a great experience for our kids. Jeannine and I have both enjoyed helping and caring for the new arrivals.

This was it! We elevated our status from having a handful of horses to now running a herd. Jeannine put her foot down, our adolescent stallion has taken a ride to CSU's veterinary hospital in Ft. Collins and has come home a little less of a man.

Oh well, mom says absolutly no more horses. Don't tell Jeannine but the kids and I are looking forward to having puppies.