Last year Payton finally got her own horse! It was many years in the making. Dziadzia, Payton’s grandpa, used to ask her “What do you dream about when you sleep?” She would answer, “I dream about having my own horse.” So he would tell her all the time, “Sweetheart, when you’re ready, I will buy you any horse you want.” Well, unfortunately he passed away before that could happen. On August 27th 2016, Dziadzia fulfilled his promise…from heaven of course and delivered to Payton a sweet and beautiful horse named Annabelle. Annabelle needed an appropriate show name, so Payton came up with ‘A Dream Come True’. A name so very fitting for so many reasons!

Over the next year, Annabelle lived at Payton’s trainers house while we worked on our house renovation. Payton would ask daily “When can we bring Annabelle home?” Our answer was always, “People first, then horses! Once WE get into the house THEN Annabelle can come.”

So with lots of planning and scheming, we made plans to bring Annabelle home as a Christmas surprise! Just 4 days after the people moved in, Annabelle did as well!

Mom and Dad and several helper elves helped to prepare a stall and pasture while Payton was at a friends house. Payton is also known as ‘Eagle Eye’ because she has an uncanny ability to sense when something is out of place or different. We knew we would need to be sly. So we prepped the stall during the day on Christmas Eve so Eagle Eye wouldn’t have an opportunity to spy anything. Of course it had to be all decked out so as to make the memory even better!

I tell ya, this bringing a horse home for the first time/first animal on the farm bit is VERY much like having your first child! It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time! What will it be like? Will we be good parents? Did we buy enough food? Is the bedding in her stall soft enough? Will she like her buckets hung here or should they go there? Did we pick the right stall or might she like one of the other ones better? What do we do if she gets sick? What if she doesn’t like it here? What if she cries all night, what do we do? Yup, just like bringing baby home!

Back to the story… Trainer Natalie acted as Santa on Christmas Eve with her horse trailer as her sleigh and delivered Annabelle while we were at church. Both Paul and I were nervous wrecks on the way home from church knowing that Annie was in our barn and wondering if we would be able to get Payton in the house before she realized Annie was here. We were giddy with the excitement that our Christmas morning surprise would bring! Eek!!

Our plan was to keep the TV on all night so as to try to drown out any ‘sounds’ that might be coming from the barn. With Payton fast asleep waiting for Santa to come, Mom & Dad went to check on Annabelle…about 100 times! Then 2am came around… “Mooooommmmyyy??? I don’t feel good. I think I’m gonna throw up!” And there it was, the Christmas Massacre of 2017! (For those that know me, I tend to ‘name’ events with silly names and the date.) It was full out puking, all day long.

Being that Paul works for Disney and they are open 365, he had to work on Christmas Day. Working for Disney has lots of perks, this is one of them lol! So before he left for work we knew we needed to reveal the ‘surprise’ as I wasn’t going to be able to hide it much longer without spilling the beans! I…was…so…excited!! So I went outside to video the whole thing and hide behind the RV so eagle eye wouldn’t see me. Paul asked her to come take the dogs out for a walk. She of course started in with the ‘I’m sick and you’re asking me to walk the dogs?! This is so unfair!’ attitude. As soon as she stepped outside, Annabelle whinnied, Payton’s head snapped around to look in the direction of the noise and the barn, and she said she saw a white stripe in the stall and she screamed “Annie!” and bolted towards the barn!

Annie was very happy to see her little girl and Payton was on cloud nine… for a couple of minutes. Then…well let’s just say the massacre continued. All. Day. Poor thing! She felt so badly that she didn’t even want to open gifts at one point!

Mom and dad were happy that we pulled off our surprise but sad that Payton felt so crappy she couldn’t enjoy the day more. I guess it’s ok because now that Annie is home, they have the rest of their lives to be together!

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