Tallulah's First Ride

Tallulah is completely obsessed with horses.  And anything that looks vaguely like a horse (zebras, mules, donkeys, deer, etc.).  She can watch Black Beauty and National Velvet over and over without losing an ounce of enthusiasm for every run, jump, and movement each horse makes.  When The Pie jumps over the fences at the Grand National, Lu's little feet leave the ground and she squeals with delight.  She hardly ever leaves the house without some sort of horse toy clutched tightly in her hand for the car ride and sometimes refuses to put her horse down to eat.  Unfortunately we don't trust any of our ranch horses with our little Lu, but our neighbors Jason and Melissa have a three year old daughter named Wren and a very gentle mule named Jesse and they very kindly invited Lu for a ride.  So here it is, her very first real ride!

I think we're going to have to get her involved in the local Pony Club soon so she can get some lessons and meet some other horse-obsessed kids!  I looked at one of the websites and they had pictures of a 3 year old riding by himself.  And I was happy to see that they train for both English and Western events.  I figure Lu should learn both since she's half English and half American.  Maybe a bit of barrel racing mixed with some English Pleasure?  And now that I finally figured out how to upload video clips as well as photos (thanks to my lovely little Mac) I can try to keep up to date with my blog more often!

Love from the LowDown,

Jen, Stew and little Lu

PS- Nearly 4 weeks and counting to New Baby Day!

Catching up

Boy oh boy has it been a long time since that last post.  Well, a lot has happened since then.  For one thing, I finally made the switch back to Mac from PC and couldn't be happier.  Everything media-related now just magically works!  I hit the power button, the computer comes on, no weird messages telling me it wasn't shut down properly or that it can't recognize it's own battery all of a sudden, and no more mysteriously disappearing programs and files.  Photos, music, video, everything just works!  Now if Obama can just come through with that rural broadband internet access program I'd be all set.

Lu has been loving playing in her new play room since the weather has gotten warm and we've opened it up for the summer.  Here she is as princess TP wearing a headdress and train of her own design.  So that's where all the toilet paper has been going...

We have also finally finished recording and mixing the new Mytty Archer album "if i had a shovel'.  Lu helped Daddy out with the mixing of course.  She's our little mix master.  I'm still working on the hand stitched cover art (I'm stitching everything, including all the song titles and text- might be biting off more than I can chew with this one) and we're waiting on the master, but it should be out sometime in the fall.  Check out

 www.myspace.com/myttyarcher to hear a few songs!

In other music-related news, we have also set-up a new download site for boyracer and boyracer-related stuff at www.boyracer.bandcamp.com.  We really like this site because there are no third party fees other than the paypal transaction fees, but it's also hard to get traffic there relative to iTunes and other, bigger sites, so we're just using this for exclusive and limited-time downloads that won't be available through larger retailers.  We're also planning to always have something up for free, so please check it out from time to time to see what treats are there!

Most importantly of all, Lu had her 2nd Birthday in May.  Annah and David came out from CA to help throw the party.  Annah handled food, drink, and party favors, David provided the Magic Show, Shana picked up the ice cream cake that wouldn't fit in our freezer overnight so it would arrive still frozen, Danica assisted with the Magic Show, Tamlyn and Coml brought Eve out to play with Lu, and AJ and Monika drove all the way up from Prescott to spend the day.  A good time was generally had by all.

In other news, I am now only about 6 weeks away from the birth of the new baby, who we have been calling "new baby" so far.  I'm bigger, heavier, and have been having a lot more early contractions and twinges this time than I did with Lu, but luckily I've also been up and around a bit more towards the end of this pregnancy.  I've even managed to do some crafting lately so I've put up some new fall colors and new designs up on my www.babyracer.etsy.com store.  Please check them out if you have time.  I can always do custom orders too if you see something you like in the wrong size, color, etc.