"Matter of Fact, this IS my first rodeo!"

I had the delight of taking three of my little cowpokes to their FIRST rodeo AND Tombstone race! My Hannah NEVER ceases to amaze me. I've never seen a child with such a willingness to try just anything. She ran in the tombstone race which in the child's division was the same as adults except she had to hurdle over bales of hay while carrying a pretty heavy "tombstone". Even though Hannah came in last in her heat (Hey, the other kids had experience and tennis shoes and Hannah was wearing her cowboy boots.) She wanted to know where her award was! Then at the rodeo they told any kids under ten who wanted to participate to come down in the arena to be in a calf scramble. She didn't even ask what a "calf scramble" was. She jumped to her feet and asked if she could go down. Mind you, she had been watching bronc and bareback riding and all kinds of wild stuff. No matter, she wanted to be a part of it. For you city slickers, the calf scramble is where they let five calves loose in the arena with ribbons tied to their tails. Pull a ribbon off a calf and you win $10.00. Bless her heart, her hat wanted to fall off as she ran so she just ran around chasing the calves as best she could while hanging on to her hat. You know a rodeo arena is just loose dirt so you gotta know it was exhausting. She ran and ran and when she came back, she seems pretty satisfied she got to be in the rodeo!! What a trooper!! Hudson, on the other hand, is like his grandpa! He's not going to do anything before making sure he can win!



I entered Joshua in the 2-3 yr old stick horse race. Unfortunately, his "heat" was the very first one. He pretty much had no idea what to do. I wished he could have watched it for awhile first. He probably would have spurred that horse to a win!
He really enjoyed watching the rodeo. He sat on my lap for two and a half hours and took it all in.