Houston Rodeo - March 2010

With the new year I am AGAIN setting the goal to update my blog more regularly.
We'll see how I do in 2010! I should have blogged our trip to the Rodeo last month just to keep things in order, but better late than never, right?

Over spring break my sister Angie and her kiddos came to visit us. One of the things we did was to go to the Houston Rodeo. By far the highlight of the Rodeo this year was that Andrew took part in the Mutton Bustin' competition. YES! He actually rode on a sheep, cowboy boots, vest and all!

Though you can't really see him, this picture is of him in the stall with the cowboys getting him all saddled up on the sheep. My camera isn't quick enough to have caught him actually on the sheep, but he stayed on for about 6 seconds. :)

They all got to march out into the arena after the competition and he was SO proud of himself and SO SO SO cute.

The kids loved the petting zoo - so much in fact that the only one I could keep near me was Andrew because I had him on a monkey leash. There were tons of animals and people in a very small fenced in area, so I didn't get many photos.

The kids remembered the Fun on the Farm exhibit from last year. They get to walk through a "farm" and feed chickens, plant seeds, sheer a sheep, pick oranges, and milk a cow (all pretend - but they love it!) Then at the end they go to market and sell their egg, vegetable, wool, orange and milk for a dollar, which they get to use to "buy" a snack at the county store.

Andrew and his cousin, David holding the "dollar" they earned at the market.

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All in all, it was a great day and tons of Texas style fun!

Bluebonnets!

I got an email that said, "You know you grew up in Texas if..." then it went on to list many typical Texas things. One of them that struck me was, "if... you have your yearly pictures taken in bluebonnets." I realized that we have lived here for 3 years and I didn't have one single picture of my children in the bluebonnets.

SO - today we drove up to Brenham to take pictures in the bluebonnets... and now the kids are officially Texans!

The flowers were gorgeous and I was surprised to see all the cars stopped on the side of the freeway with people taking pictures. If I wasn't driving I would have taken a picture of all the cars and people literally walking around with their children on the side of the 65mph freeway.

We found a spot about 1/2 mile off the freeway with a gorgeous field of flowers. We started out trying to keep the kids from stepping on any of them... but once Andrew ran through them and threw himself down on them, I just surrendered and let them have fun.
Andrew thought it was great fun to be out running in a field of flowers. Sean and I were both a bit stressed out by his jubilation, however, since he kept running and darting toward the road and parking lot. At least we weren't by the freeway!

Sean wasn't real excited about the whole adventure... but he suffered through it. :)



What I didn't think of was to dress my kids in cute matching outfits. We'll have to do that next year! :) Check back in 2011...