Ashton and Anna finally made it back to a Delphi Alumni Weekend together. It was great seeing all the old friends and meeting the new kids who make up the new generation of Delphi Students. It’s only been 6 years since I graduated, but there were were a couple seniors (or recent graduates) who I actually supervised/taught when they were 3 feet tall. It was amazing seeing how these little children have grown up. Here’s a picture blog of some of the great events:

Volleyball

The party started with Volleyball. Where Cesar and his Lady Dragons beat us 3 to 1:

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Although I work with Front Sight, I rarely have time to take a course. I took my first two-day defensive handgun course around 2002. Then I took my wife out for a two-day defensive handgun course in 2008. I finally made it back in 2010; this time for a (mid-week) four-day defensive handgun course!

Unfortunately, almost none of my friends made it. The only one who made it go right to come to the class with me was Emily, a friend of a friend who I hadn’t actually met in person before. It could have been much more awkward than it actually was; but turned out great. The only real awkwardness was that everyone in the class assumed we were dating or married.

We got to Front Sight ridiculously early in the morning, and stood in a surprisingly fast “sign-in” line. We got our firearms checked out and went into for our introduction speech.

Then we went off to our Ranges. We started on Range #14; which is part of the semi-new ranges at Front Sight.

Of course, the Front Sight Staff demonstrated the things we would be learning before we learned them (which they did amazingly perfect).

We shot a couple hundred rounds the first couple days, including some simulated bad guy posters:

We had wonderful weather and some fabulous sunsets at range 14.

Even though it was a mid week course (Monday-Thursday), there were around 350 students there. The parking area seemed to extend forever.

For the speed tests, we used targets that would turn away from you after the allotted time. Here’s Emily getting a round off at the last possible second (as the signs turned away):

We also learned some basic movement tactics for going through a doorway. (Side Note: If you every go to a shooting class like Front Sight don’t bring scratched glasses for eye protection. The extra blurriness is not helpful.)

At the very end of the four-day defensive handgun there is a “skills test” that tests the speed you perform all of the things you learned at Front Sight. It was much harder than I expected it would be for me. I did manage to sneak in a “Graduate Certificate” which about 5-7 of the 40 students got. We had one “Distinguished Graduate” in the class.

Here’s me getting my cert and with the Front Sight Instructors:

I have pages I’d love to write about my experience at Front Sight. The course was fun, entertaining, yet very disciplined. Lunch was taken in a room with 300 other “armed-to-the-teeth” students, and it felt like any normal lunch. The Instructors were really amazing. The drills were very repetitive, but the instructors remained enthusiastic, funny and alert.

Probably the most impressive part of the weekend was the Q&A session during one of the lunch breaks. Students were asking all sorts of questions, and Wes answered them all simply and plainly. There was no dodging of questions or any games.

I can’t wait to go back (with Anna this time)!
Ashton

2010 has been an awesome year for us except for blog postings. We’ve done an absolutely horrible job of posting on our blog(s). I hope to remedy that very soon. The plan is to start posting pictures and posts of all the events that have occurred in the last 10 months and date them for the time they happened. If this all works out, no one would even know we’d totally abandoned our blog for almost an entire year… save for this short paragraph.

Since I couldn’t leave this as such a boring post, I decided to continue by posting pictures of some of the randomity of 2010: namely anything that wasn’t important enough to have it’s own blog post. Enjoy.

On October 8th, we had “Formal Friday”. We even went out to lunch at the Hot Spot. =)

AshAnna watched Julie and Julia together and Anna got super excited to cook some yummy foods. This was our breakfast the next morning! Yummy!

Oh, and I (Ashton) cooked my first apple pie. I still have lots to learn, but it was edible…

My friend from Von Rocko gave me an awesome storm trooper picture for a present, and I fell in love with StarCraft 2. (I got to play the beta for a few glorious months.) Here’s my work station:

Anna competed in 3 Dressage competitions this year, and qualified to compete a the championships!

What would a blog post be without a picture of Mocha being adorable:

Enjoy,
Ashton

Today, our Trakahner Mare, Liana, gave birth to her first foal; an adorable Trakahner colt.

The Trakahner breed puts more importance on the mare (mother), so a Trakahner foal’s name must begin with the first letter of the mare’s name. Before we knew what gender the foal was going to be, Anna did a facebook survey with some filly/colt names that she liked. Here are Anna’s facebook posts and the comments from people who liked Linux:

Anna

So we have a baby horse thus a name survey With this breed of horse I have to pick a name that starts with the same letter as the Mom’s “L”. Here are a few picks for if it’s a girl!
1. Lanai (veranda) 2. Lareina (queen) 3. Laveda (cleansed) 4. Leala (loyal) 5. Lavena (mother of roman people) 6. Lexie (protector of mankind) 7. Labella (beautiful) 8. Laurette (little angel) 9. Lila (night) 10. Lisha

Here’s the Boy’s

1. Lark (songbird) 2. Lake 3. Lanier (woolworker) 4. Lander (landowner) 5. Larkin (fierce) 6. Latif (elegant) 7. Larch (a type of tree) 8. Lacrosse (a game) 9. Lancelot (attendant) 10. Linux (computer nerd name

Don’t forget this is for a horse so it can’t be hard to say quickly. It also can’t be a name that has been used before so don’t be offended if I can’t use a great name as it may be taken.

• 

  Kori Curry I like lander best and Linux the computer one second
• 

  Dawn Denison Larkin is cool. Ditto with Linux
• 

  Devin Hanson Linux is cool I bet Ashton will like that one too.
• 

  Anna Wow guys thanks for all the feedback! Glad you like Linux Not sure about the Twilight thing lol..Sorry Marla Lucy is taken
• 

  Ashton hahah @ linux. That’s hillarious. I also like Lander and Lancelot.

After the majority voted for “Linux” (Pronouced: Lynn-ex), and as a tribute to her nerdy husband, Anna chose Linux for the new colt. (Linux is a computer operating system like Windows.)

Here is a picture of him on his birthday:

Liana was 4 days late. Which just so happened to be when Anna left for a weekend horse show with Ossette. The first day Anna was gone, Carol was feeding the horses, and saw the new baby out in the field. We figured he was born around 4:00. He was so long-legged, it took him 3 or 4 hours before he was able to stand and drink.

It was sprinkling that evening, and a beautiful rainbow came out.

*UPDATE: Here’s some updated pictures of Linux a couple days to a couple months old*

You can see more pictures on Anna’s Top Priority Trakahners Website.

We have survived another year in Northern Montana!

To the right, you can see Liana (pregnant Trakehner mare), Anna, Ashton and Maple Pancake in front of our house.

Our ranch is still keeping us very occupied. We planted another 15 baby trees just in case we run out of oxygen. We added 500 feet of underground water pipes to add 4 hydrants all around our property.

The largest project we have done to date was building a new “Epic Barn!” With the help of many great neighbors and friends, we took down and rebuilt this 1000+ sq ft barn! (You can see endless details on our AshtonAnna Blog. )

Anna’s Top Priority Trakehners is doing great. Liana (above) is pregnant (due 2010). They also purchased a new Trakehner named Elbe: an imported mare from Germany. She had a small meeting with Trakhener Breeders from Idaho and Montana, plus a special guest, Dr. Maren Engelhardt, a breeder from Germany.

Anna went for a 3 week apprenticeship with a Trakhner breeding farm in Florida and started showing the first horse she bred: Ossette.

On the nerd front, Ashton found a great group of web programmers in Montana. He has done a few presentations on topics like CSS and Search Engine Optimization. He’s learned a lot and found some more great friends.

Ashton’s Websites in a Flash business is still doing great, starting out the year with a brand new website re-design and another consistent highest-ever income year. The more he learns, the more he realizes that the learning curve for web developers never really ends.

Here’s a collection of my favorite posts from 2009:

Sledding on our neighbor’s hill

ATV 306′s on Ice

First 2009 Spring Grub Club

Epic Barn Project Begins

Digging a Moat around our house

Epic Barn Completed

<3,
Ashton and Anna