Fun Fall Times...

Student: Alexis - competing this weekend at the "Beginner Novice" level for the first time


Student: Carter from CO

Student: Carter from CO

the show-jumping arena & barn

The barn:)

Spring Ridge Stables

The potential water jump comples - ohh the fun times to come next summer!

Annie enjoying the purple flowers

Annie & mom having fun outdoors:)

Fall time in TN

Oh how she loves her daddy time

Aren't they cute!

so it's about time to add photos of Annie playing in our backyard with John and I before TN winter 'sets' in...Annie is now growing so quickly, she is in the 80% percentile in height for her age - she is definatly a Fildes baby! There are also some photos of the barn I teach at with some of the students jumping. This weekend the girls are headed to their first, official eventing horse show. It will be a busy weekend with halloween, but a fun one with hopefully a good placing at the end of the weekend.

Cades Cove Oct. 08

Jessica & Annie


Fildes family by Abrahm's fall in Cades Cove


Annie not sure about her bathrobe...


Enjoying the leaves @ Cades Cove


John & Annie



Fildes family getting back to the car @ dark after the hike

We decided to drive up to the 'tourist' spot of Cades Cove for a short hike to see a waterfall. We kept trying to keep our expectations really low b/c of the hiking we had done in CO. We quickly found out, hiking in TN has a completely different meaning than CO. We had to follow a long line of traffic around the 11 mile loop, stoping at every turn to view: grass, a baby dear, wild turkey - & who knows what else people were looking at -eventually we found the trail we wanted to do and John was very glad to pull off the loop away from people going 2 mph. We had to laugh at the "steep graded hill" - we definatly saw driveways in Durango with much steeper hills... We were both pleasantly surprised that there were not as many people on the trails as we had anticipated. We even got some fun photos. Annie loved being outside in the woods looking at all the light through the leaves. We found the waterfall, took some photos, and headed back to the car. It turned out to be a beautiful hike to and from the waterfall with all the autumn leaves and cooler air. Now we hope to find some 'not-so-touristy' spots for our next outdoor adventure...