Half pass, check.

Do you ever have those days when you finally put together all the little pieces of work from the past few months and it actually works?
Today I did.
T-Bone was in such good frame of mind today, that I could basically work on anything I wanted. After warming up and doing some collected canter, I worked a little on half steps. We had only been asking for a little bit up until now, and of course it was confusing - I mean basically you are telling the horse to stop and go at the same time. Well today, he did it! It finally clicked! It's still just in the baby stages, as I have to ask him for half steps by doing turn on the haunches in the trot - this sort of forces him to collect and trot on the spot. But it was way cool!
I decided to leave half steps alone after that ... and moved on to half pass. (at the trot) I always start out doing shoulder in, circle at E, then travers to warm up. After I feel the lateral movements are going well, I picked a long side ... started shoulder-in and then I asked "Would you move sideways?" (with the appropriate aids of course, wouldn't it be nice if you could just vocally ask for the movements? haha!) ... and he did! I was watching in the mirror and was astonished to see a lovely half-pass. I only asked him to half pass from the wall to the quarter line, immediately dropped the reins and said "good horse!" and finished on that. My instructor happened to be watching too and was so tickled. I was so proud of my horse. I still can't believe what progress we've made since August.
That's all me gots for today. Peace!