Family Night Rodeo

One of this little boy's most favorite things in all of life is dressing up like a cowboy.

(tough cowboy face)

It's a regular occurrence around our house. Daily almost.

(isn't this a great picture? they look like Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
I think the blurriness just adds to the authenticity.)

And so it seemed that a Family Night Rodeo was most certainly in order.

We started the night with some traditional chuckwagon grub. Beans, cornbread, fried potatoes, and iced tea. Only I forgot to start the beans cooking in the crock pot over the camp fire that morning, so we had to improvise and trade a couple of chickens for some already-cooked beans at the mercantile.

Then after dinner we mosied on out to the arena for a bit of friendly competition.

Miss Kloe designed and created our programs for the evening....

....and also proudly carried the banner of our great nation.....

....while honorable cowboys paid their respects as the National Anthem was sung.

And then the festivities began!

First up....barrel racing! Mom logged a respectable time on Cinderella....

but Kloe took first place with an amazing time of 14.5 seconds!

Next on the schedule (check your program, folks)....calf roping. The calf put forth a valiant effort....

but when matched up against these talented cowboys and cowgirls....

....she didn't stand much of a chance (the calf, that is). Jacob took home the prize money in calf roping, with two winning throws!

[Ah, the love of a cowboy and his dog. Our Miss Annie is a true cow dog....half blue heeler and half border collie. She is Jacob's right-hand girl. Although no herding was allowed during the competition.]

After the calf roping was the ladel race. Contestants use a ladel to scoop water out of a bucket, run to the other end of the arena, dump the water into a bowl, then race back and hand off the ladel to the next person on their team. The first team to fill up their bowl with water wins.

We declared the ladel race a draw.

Moving to the indoor arena (to get away from the mosquitoes), the cowboys (and cowgirls) prepared for the most daring and dangerous sport in the world of rodeo....bull fighting!

Jacob tried some steer wrestling moves on the bull....

but, sadly, the bull was victorious in the end.

We skipped the closing sarimony (quoting the program here) in favor of a snack.

After the rodeo, Jacob offered to pay me 6 pieces of silver if I would let him park his horse at my hitching post during the dance....

....except, instead of going to the dance after the rodeo we decided to invite over a couple of friends....

....and watch "The Ballad of Little Joe".


What a great night of cowboy fun!

Ok, this post took me forever. Seriously. Like, days. DAYS! Moving photos around and trying to get all the spacing to look right in blogger is infuriatingly time consuming. I've seriously got to take a class or something.