Yee Haw!

We headed out to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this weekend. It’s always good to get our city slicker kids out to see the animals in the exhibit hall. We realized this last year when, as we were looking at the cattle, one of the cows moo’d and Brittany said “I didn’t know that’s what cows sounded like when they moo’d.” We told her not to talk so loud and vowed to come back again next year to try and “expand their horizons.”

So this year when Brittany saw this this mama cow with her newborn calf:

and then asked, “now what kind of animal exactly is that?” we seriously questioned what our children knew about even the simplest of agricultural knowledge.

So we showed them this:

and we showed them some cute NEWBORN piglets

and hoped that they were learning something about farm life.

I’m not positive it all worked out like planned though because when one of the kids asked where the cows went, I overheard Bill say…“you smell those burgers cookin’?” So now they are probably all thinking of becoming vegetarians, which was not the original plan.

We then headed to the rodeo where it is always fun to watch the bull riders, calf scramble and have a little pizza to boot.

But all that was just a warm up act for the big attraction….The Jonas Brothers concert! Now maybe I’m getting old, but it was LOUD. Really loud and the acoustics were so bad that Caroline and I both agreed that it sounded like they were about 2 radio dial turns off the original station so it just sounded completely full of static. But there were some fun songs and we all had a good time.

Our tickets were compliments of El Paso Energy (thankyouverymuch). We enjoyed all the perks of sitting in the El Paso box (ice cream in cowboy hats anyone?).

We did share the suite with El Paso’s CEO and his children. And you know what that means? It means we told (aka threatened) our kids that if they liked having food on our table and a roof over our heads that they better act like they deserved to be sitting in the box seats. And they must have taken that lecture to heart, because they were great. So great in fact that when we were leaving the box, Jacob asked…. “Daddy, were we good?” When Bill said “yes”, Jacob said “Great!…now we can keep our house.”

All I could think was “oh Lordy…I wonder who heard THAT?!”

After the rodeo and concert we headed out to the midway for Houston’s version of the state fair. Midway rides galore that cost a small fortune so the kids picked a few and had a great time. Jacob rode his first roller coaster:

and of course no midway experience is complete without a funnel cake… (or two)

for us all to share!

And when we finished, Savannah loaned me her cowgirl hat:

so we could mosey on home.

Because these cowboys and cowgirls were tired!!!

And as we pulled out of the parking lot Jacob rolled down his window and yelled… “Goodbye roller coaster, I love you!!”

And I sat there thinking…. “gosh, and it was the cows we wanted them to remember.”