First Rodeo

When I lived in Az, we attended rodeos every year.  I recall it being hot and dusty...and mildly enjoying them.  I do recall looking forward to going each year.  Weird - that I enjoyed it and didn't all at once.

This last visit to the ol' ILs, they mentioned the rodeo was in town.  We gave Rebekah and Peter the choice between lake and rodeo and they chose the rodeo.  I found this surprising, as Rebekah has been asking to go to the lake for weeks now.

It turned out it didn't start until 8:00 PM.  I wasn't crazy about going at that point, but it was too late.  I didn't find out until 5:30 PM or so...entirely too late to change plans.  Especially since we left our lake gear at home.  Peter doesn't do well staying up late.

To top it off, it was Thomas' birthday...and ILs chose to not do cake until after the rodeo.  YAY...I know getting sugared up children into bed at 10:00 PM is every parents idea of fun.

But I digress.

Rebekah and William's mom waiting for the rodeo to start.

The boys...everyone except Uncle Thomas.

As I was sitting there, I made some observations.  The first is that my footwear attire wasn't exactly...well, let's just say it was obvious I was a tourist.  When I looked around, I saw mostly these:

And I was wearing these...

I didn't get very many pictures because the sun set on me...

but here's one of the broncos (or whatever) bucking.

Attempting to catch a run away horse...
this one was particular onery.  

I actually liked him. :-)

(You can see in the above picture, the other common attire I happened to be missing...)

Cowboy and bovine parting ways

The kids had a pretty good time.  During intermission, the kids all got on the field and chased after an unsuspecting calf with a ticket for a free bike tied to its tale.  All for entertainment?  Two age groups.  The first was 7-12 yrs, so we knew what was going on when it came to the younger crowd.

I asked Rebekah if she wanted to go, and she said yes.  So I took her down there to participate.  She ran like a champ.  She had no idea what she why she was running, but she sure had a good time running.  No pictures b/c I was down there and didn't really have time to grab my camera.  We didn't realize there were going to be two groups of kids (until they announced the younger group), and therefore didn't prep Rebekah (or myself).

The kicker is that I'm told the calf for the smaller group of kids was larger than the first.  The kids actually weren't fast enough to keep up, so some adults (or teens?) grabbed it so the kids could catch up with it.

Rebekah was BEAMING when she came out of there.  She totally loved it and talked about it the next day too.   We asked her if she knew she was chasing after the calf afterward, and she had no idea.  HA!  She was just enjoying the run.

We had a good time at the rodeo, and left early to go home and have cake.  (It also happened to be Uncle Thomas' birthday.)  We managed to have them asleep by 10:45.  And yes, they were crabby the next day!  And no, I'm not sure it was worth it...but at least we had a good time!