My glamorous life

• 2:45 AM : alarm rings, Michelle gets up
• 3:15 AM : I give up on sleeping in until 3:30 AM
• 4:00 AM : leave house
• 4:20 AM : arrive at farm
• 5:00 AM : leave farm, with horse in tow
• 7:00 AM : arrive at 4H District competition
• 7 AM - 12:30 PM : Show dad duty, consisting mostly of lifting heavy stuff and taking pictures, with a little manure clean up thrown in for good measure.
• 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM : Tow horse back to farm.
• 2:30 - 3:00 : clean and park trailer, fall asleep in chair waiting for Delaney to get her post show stuff done. (tack stowed, horse cleaned, etc)
• 3:30 PM : Arrive at home - unload truck, clean coolers, etc
• 3:45 PM - lay down for a 15 minute nap - fail to fall asleep
• 4:00 PM: Give up on nap and check email.

update 4:30-ish: Fell asleep at desk. Woke up by wife at 4:45 PM.

Tomorrow will be a repeat, except that the show is local so the commute will be 15 minutes instead of 2 hours.

For those of you with horse crazy little girls...this type of schedule is not the exception, it's the rule. Even for a local show that starts at 8:30AM you'll want to be there 90 minutes before your first event to have time to warm up the horse and rider, get dressed, etc. Horse shows generally start with the youngest competitors first, so your 10 year old will be doing this to you frequently. Get used to it ;)

We are not particularly hardcore about this either. 1 or 2 local shows a month, with a trip thrown in to 4H Districts and State, is a very typical show schedule for a young rider. We haven't even contemplated multi-day shows, and living out of a horse trailer on the weekends.

Sharing your weekend residence with an equine friend that poops 40 lbs per day may be my daughter's idea of glamor, but not mine :)