Did I mention the word ADVENTURE?

Oh my... it has been quite the fun 3 days!! I have realized that I have much to learn, confidence to gain and courage to find! The first night with Sundance seemed great and then I brought her out the next day and got some attitude - (read disrespect) from her... she would do what I asked her to do, but as I now realize she was doing it her way. I didn't get on her, because I realized I was totally unsure of my bridal and it's fit - so frustrated with myself, I called my dad and double checked with him - he reminded me that I wasn't going to remember everything in a day. I then went in to the house, called the people that we had purchased the 'untrained' horse from, that was supposed to be coming Mon. and told them that I was in way over my head and had my hands full and was not experienced enough to take on another horse right now, so cancelled the sale! I felt bad, and apologized profusely, but  there was just no way!!
Sometime during that night or the early morning hours - (based on today's banging on the gate at 6:00 a.m.) I am hoping it was only for 45 min. or so - but she found a week spot in the fence and pushed it out of her way to get out (has a small cut on her leg and scraped the hair off of her side in a nice line) and went to explore the neighborhood and eat some grass. She was eventually cornered by the Sheriff's and a neighbor was woken up by them and she said she would come and see whose horse it was. She saw her, knew it was ours and her husband came to get us, while she went to get the horse. This was at 7 a.m., Greg woke up and said he was having a weird dream about the horse being saddled and running lose in the pasture - so he went to check on her and went out the door as the neighbor was coming up to the yard to get us. He comes in and said "the horse is out" I jump up and say "out in our pasture or out as in gone?" he said "gone"! I threw on clothes and ran out the door, and she had been put back in the enclosure she had escaped from. Greg grabbed wire to go fix it and Karen (my neighbor) took a look at my face and started laughing and said "Welcome back to the world of horses!" Indeed!
I of course thanked her and then went to investigate the horse and fences again! Then I had to hurry and get kids to soccer games in Roy, take the horse papers back to the people that I cancelled the sale with, get something for her leg and fly spray and come back home. My dad was here to help out with her and see where we were at. We saddled her up and I took her for some work around the pasture area behind our house, she did really well, then Dad changed saddles, got on and took her for a few turns - I took the kids an a few rides and things seemed to be great. Then I took her out around town for a minute to see if she had any spooks to the cars, motorcycles, dogs etc. and she was okay until I took her through the pasture across the street and back out and man did she want to stay in there, so we had a little disagreement about where she was going to go, and I took her back down the road.
Some neighbors were out in their front yard, (Steve Johnson who is amazing with horses and told me he would be happy to take a look at her and see how she was) so I rode her over and he could see immediately that I didn't have her respect. So he took her and me and my dad to the round pen in his back pasture to show me how to get her respect. On the way to the round pen, she stepped on the reign and snapped her bridle in two and took off! Fabulous! But not a big deal, other than a broken bridle. We got her into the round pen and I watched in amazement as he taught her in 15 min. to respect him. It was like being in one of the T.V show training sessions. He really was amazing and had so much good insight to the horse psychy. I rode home on a different horse than I arrived with. I laid awake for a long time trying to replay in my head what he had done and how I would do it. He corrected how she had been trained by her previous owner and taught me how to give her better cues.
 So - it ended on a good note... I have so much to learn! one of the first things I need to learn is to wear a hat and sunscreen - I. am. fried.!! I am also incredibly sore, from my arms to my legs, to my ankle!! In shape I am not and need to be!! However, in order to hush the voices in my head trying to discourage me, I went over all the things I was grateful for before finally falling to sleep... there are many and I am thankful for the opportunity to stretch myself and learn and enjoy the ride! :)