To the right, you can see our latest addition to our Ranch, Linux, Trakehner colt (boy). You can also see Anna, Ashton and Mocha.

Florida

This year started with a trip to Florida so we could see family and spend time in the Florida sun. We stayed with David and Marcy for few months. Ashton found some beach volleyball players and amazingly got a sunburn in the middle of winter.

We also got to spend time with Ashton’s relatives: Grandpa Joe, Aunt Debbie, Uncle Lenny, and cousins Jared and Evan.

Montana

In June, Anna’s Pregnant Mare gave birth to Linux, an adorable, kind colt (pictured above).

Ashton learned how to weave apple pie crusts (and make apple pies).

We had another handful of friends visit us this summer. Grandpa Joe and Geoffrey visited for over a week. It’s always so much fun having Grandpa Joe around.

Just before our family came to visit, one of my best friends from school agreed to come and live with us for a year. Ashton has been teaching him websites, and he’s been helping Anna with the horses and running the ranch.

While Geoffrey and Ross were here, we managed to have a successful one-day LAN (computer game) party!

November

In November, Anna went to the Florida to visit her friends at Valhalla Farms and attend the American Trakehner Association’s Annual Convention. Ashton went to Front Sight for a four-day defensive handgun course, and then to Los Angeles for Delphi LA’s Alumni Weekend.

Websites in a Flash

Our website business, Websites in a Flash, has continued to expand. We’ve been very fortunate to find some very good help and have been keeping them busy with lots of work. We’ve had a lot of fun working on projects together. We even had a “Formal Friday” where we all went out to lunch dressed to the nines. We have a lot of fun.

Trakehners and Dressage

Anna has continued to show her horses in Dressage competitions in the North West. She had three successful shows with several first and second placings. She earned second place in her division for Trakehners across the nation!

You can see her horses at http://www.tptrakehners.com/

<3,
Ashton and Anna Sanders

Volleyball

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

It was actually a pretty close game. I had a couple good plays, but also managed to lose a game for us =/ Obviously, I don’t have any pictures of me failing. It was very fun playing on such a short net though.

Basketball

Basketball was a little better for the Alumni. We won 40 to 26, but this is the best shot I got of us… about to do a jump shot. =)

Our team was Dane and Brando Christensen, Damian Espinosa, a skilled parent and me.

Soccer

Definitely the highlight of the weekend, the soccer game was awesome. Although I was sure we would win easily, it ended up being a very very close game. We won 3 to 2. Adam got 2 goals, and Kerry Jones got 1 goal. I got two assists .

Here’s a couple action shots:
Geoffrey:

Ashton vs Cesar:

Here’s some pics of the team:

Jump Shot!

I was the only one to play in all three alumni games. =)

And here’s a few pics of good friends at the soccer game:

It was so great seeing everyone. I hope to make it to the next one too!
<3
Ashton

(btw, All of these pictures were taken by Anna except the ones I took of her.)

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

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

As a lot of you know I breed a type of horse called a Trakehner which is a Warmblood horse originating from Prussia. Jean Brinkman has been breeding Trakehners since the early 70′s and helped start the American Trakehner Association (ATA), which is amazing! I met Jean in November of 2008 at the ATA annual meeting in Los Angeles which I attended with a few of my horses. I told Jean I knew I had a lot more to learn about the breed and she very kindly invited me to come to her farm to learn. After I got home from Los Angeles I figured out the best time to go down there and arranged the trip with her.

Erin Brinkman & Imminence

I was gone from April 3rd – 21st and had an amazing time! Flying into Florida was the only horrible part about the trip. I left Montana at 9:00 am and didn’t arrive in Jacksonville until 5:00 am the next day due to the storms over Jacksonville. I stayed in a hotel at the airport and got maybe 5-6 hours of sleep then took a shuttle to the Jacksonville Equestrian Center to meet Jean and her Dressage trainers who were competing for the weekend. It was definitely a great introduction to the trip seeing the talented horses and riders from Valhalla at their best.

Iris & Aura

Competing for the weekend was Erin Brinkman on Imminence a young newly approved stallion owned by her mother Jean. Erin was also there with two of her dressage students so I was able to watch her coach them and compete on one of the horses. She placed 1st in all of her classes for the weekend which was very impressive! Also competing for the weekend was Iris Eppinger and her working student Anna Franklin. Iris was riding Prix St George on one of Jean’s mares Aura and did very well! Iris also rode a client’s horse Etoile who was purchased from Jean and the owner kept the horse in training at Valhalla. Anna rode her horse Walden at 1st and 2nd Level and won 1st place. To say the least there were a lot of blue ribbons hanging around our stalls.

It was an exciting weekend and I was able to see a lot of nice horses and riders. I was also able to meet Lauren Barwick, a Parelli paralympic rider who rode Dressage in the 2008 Paralympic Games in China last summer. She was competing on the same horse she took to China and a new chestnut horse.

Lauren Barwick

After 3 exciting days in Jacksonville I drove to the farm with Jean in her huge RV which we slept in for the weekend. When we arrived she gave me a tour of her huge farm which I believe I mentioned is on 600 acres!! Her wonderful husband who is a retired vet cares for a herd of cattle and bales tons of hay for the horses. He also has lots of fun construction projects including a guest house in a tree!

I have to admit there is no way I can remember all the names of her 100+ horses but they were all very impressive and well mannered. Jean has done an amazing job of breeding performance horses that are easy to train, compete and care for. I loved meeting all of her wonderful stallions including Stiletto, Hailo, Hilife, Imminence, Incantare and Erin’s stallion Donaufurst.

On Jean’s property are several cute houses where her staff stay. I was able to share a house with Iris, (mentioned above) we had a great time rooming together.

I was able to pick Jean’s brain and talk with her about breeding and I learned many valuable things for my program. She told me the most important thing she learned in breeding the best horses was to RIDE! If you know how to ride well and ride a lot of horses you can figure out what kind of performance horse you should be creating. So I did just that, I worked with Iris most of the time I was there and she gave me daily Dressage lessons which was an incredible experience. She helped me improve my riding and inspired me to do a lot more with my own horses. I learned a different way to lunge, how to free jump and many physical stretches for horses.

New Foal

While I was there a new foal was born! She is 1/2 Trakehner and 1/2 Arabian and sooooo cute! She actually belongs to Andrew Palmer, one of the trainers at Valhalla Farms. I loved spending time petting her and getting her used to humans. I can’t wait for my 2010 foals!

I was given a chance to ride a few very nice stallions including Donaufurst who was trained to Grand Prix. The first time I took him out was on a trail ride with a few other horses and he insisted on being the head of the pack. He had a very interesting way of telling me this which was cantering in place, piaffeing and passaging which are all upper level dressage movements! I was pretty shocked and thrilled to be feeling those movements as I have never been on an upper level horse before. Later in my trip I was given a proper lesson on him and was able to feel several flying lead changes as well!

Hilife

The other stallion I was given the chance to ride was Hilife who also gave me my first real feeling of an extended trot.

I really enjoyed all the trail rides which took us through their old cross country course and across their nice pastures. One day we even swam in a large pond and got very wet.

Hilife

My last weekend there I went to a 3-Day event in Ocala and assisted Andrew Palmer with 2 stallions he was competing with. I had a blast being surrounded by the eventing world and learning as much as I could about it. It was 4 very fun and exhausting days with a lot of walking due to the widespread facility.

Stiletto

Andrew did very well on Stiletto, owned by Valhalla and Inamorato, owned by Tina Potter. Tina and I had a great time helping Andrew all weekend, she was like a mother feeding us, driving us around and even sharing her hotel room with me.

Stiletto

Inamorato & Andrew practice for Cross Country

I spent a total of 18 days at the farm and 6 days at a dressage show and 3-Day event. I had an amazing time and enjoyed everything, even the huge chickens that roam the property to the beautiful birds that enjoy their birdhouses.

-Anna

If you’re interested in more back story: The previous owners lived in our current house for 1 year. The winter that they were here, the father had this great idea of dragging his children behind his vehichle on a tarp. I bet they had a blast, and it ended up killing a lot of the grass in a long strip. So now we have a fairly flat, slightly lower strip of land going through the middle of our pasture. It was this strip that now is home to our frozen puddle.

I think that’s enough details to enjoy our video. Donald and I (Ashton) took our friend’s ATV out into the pasture and had some fun:

Ashton:

Donald:

Here’s the video we made:

Wahoo! What a blast!
-Ashton

We’d estimate that this slope is 300 feet long. Here’s a video of some of the crazy slopes we took:

Then we got tired of hiking that ridiculous hill, so we had Cory pull us behind his old Toyota Land Cruiser.

Happy New Year,
Ashton Anna

Anna’s father & step-mom decided to get married in Lahaina, Maui and invited all of his children and grandchildren to celebrate with him at a large house right on the beach, which they kindly paid for. (Most of the sunset pictures below were taken from the back porch!) We had a great time. Thank you John and Lisa for inviting us and providing such a great place to hang out and relax.

After Anna and I got married, we decided that we’re going to go on one vacation/honeymoon a year. And since we were married on September 21st, going to Maui for John and Lisa’s wedding in October was a perfect “Honeymoon Version 2.0.”

I think I have finally gotten all of my blog-worthy Maui Pictures cropped and uploaded. I’m not going to lie: I’ve posted way too many pictures, but it’s better than the alternative. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to add captions to all of the images, but I’ll try grouping them.

Anna’s sister, Diana Henderson, is an amazing photographer and posted some of her Maui pictures on her photography blog. I definitely recommend checking those out. (You may have to scroll down a little.)

Okay, let’s get started with a picture of us:

Now that we got that out of the way, time for some babies:





Madeleine




Jace




Mason



Turtles

Biggest Single Tree Ever


Etc.

Just because it was ridiculous, Anna and I will tell the story of our trip home to Montana from Maui:

On Sunday, we helped pack up the cars, and drove to the airport with the family. The family left on a 2:00 PM flight, and we left on a 7:00 PM flight. After dropping off John’s rental car (hehe), we “relaxed” in the airport until we could check our bags at 4:30.

We got on the plane in Maui at 6:30 and landed in Kona, Hawaii at 7:30. After sitting in the plane for another 45 minutes, we left again, arriving in Seattle Washington approximately 5.5 hours later at 5:30 AM (Ashton got 2 hours of sleep, and Anna couldn’t sleep.)

We switched planes again and finally arrived in Spokane, Washington at 8:00 AM on Monday. We got in our car, and drove for 4 1/2 hours arriving home at 2:30 PM (with baggage and lunch).

Yep, ridiculous.

Enjoy,
AshtonAnna

First here are some sunsets with the newlyweds (and “almost-weds”). All of these pictures were taken from our pack patio.

Here’s Matt walking out into the ocean. It was about 2-3 feet deep for at least 50 yards.

I also got these two random pics I thought you’d enjoy:

Enjoy the photos!!