Our new Neigh-bour

We have a new neighbour.  If you've ever been to our place you know that this time of year we are surrounded by corn fields, aside from the landlords across the street we have no other neighbours.  There are other people who live on our road but they are way down, privacy is in abundance.  It means that when I get distracted by my children and totally forget to finish getting dressed, thus walking around with pants and a bra nobody can see we're haning out nobody can see in the windows.  It also means when we've got the tunes blaring and we're singing and dancing along, I don't need to be concerned that we're waking or annoying anyone.  It's great. 

It's one of the things we love about living here.  Being that we're out in the cow country there are those lovely Chilliwack odors that can make the air heavy sometimes and out here in the farmlands, with fields directly behind us those odors can be slightly, magnified.  So privacy and quiet (aside from those farmers who are on drugs and think that 3am is the time to take down the corn!) are our smell survival bonus'.

Back to the neighbour, he kind of caught us off guard.  He doesn't live in a traditional house and in fact over the past few weeks has moved into the empty lot directly beside our driveway.  It's not totally bad, because of where he is, he can't see into our window (bonus for me!) but he's a restless sort and all his rustling around has been known to scare the bejeepers out of me at 11:00 at night.  He loves carrots and adores my children, over all we're kinda glad he's here.

In case you hadn't guess yet, our new neighbour is a horse*.  He's the landlords horse and for whatever reason they keep moving him from his usual place on their farm over to the lot.  He's 27 and apparently that's old in horse years - I happen to resent the fact that anyone imply that 27 is old but hey, he's a horse.  He used to do chariot races and take little kids on horse rides but he's retired now, he's old and sweet and my girls LOVE him.

He's usually in the lot for 2 weeks or so at a time and then back in the farm for a few days.  On the days he's here the kids love to go see him before we go out for the day.  Each girl carrying a carrot as a food offering, watching him munch and slobber the carrot all over the ground.  It makes their day.  Beth loves him but is slightly afraid to touch him, his sheer size is to her, intimidating.  Audrey on the other hand thinks he's awesome and wants to touch him and pet him and I'm pretty sure if horses licked faces she'd be down with that.  I might puke, but she'd be all, "Ohhhh, he loves me"

He's a sweet ol' fella and if we had to get a neighbour this year we're glad it was him.  The girls would love to have a horse, I always secretly wanted one and this way we get the best of both worlds - we get to feed and visit a horse, and they get to deal with the poop.  And since it seems these days I spend at least 3 hours in a day wiping bums, I'm down with that deal.

*We are sure this horse has a name, unfortunately we have yet to connect with the landlords to get that name.  Before he moved in, Kathy was telling me all about him but never mentioned a name....they've since been gone or we've been busy and thus, to us he's just Horse.  Sometimes I think it's almost easier and have even contemplated being just Girl, for simplicity.