Yeehaw!! The Rodeo has Come to Town

Just in case you were wondering just how far north we have moved, I thought this post would clarify things. You know you're a redneck when...your small town is one of only a few stops on the professional rodeo circuit. Yep, that's us. The very first morning of the rodeo is "Heritage Days", which is a miniature rodeo for the school kids. We, of course, signed ourselves up and headed over. In our natural, on-time fashion, we showed up twenty minutes prior to the start time on the brochure. What we did not know was that the time listed was the arrival time for the school buses. So we had the place completely to ourselves for a while. It wasn't all bad though. We got to see the Budweiser Clydesdales warming up for the day.

And wander around a little...seeing all sorts of famous people we do not know.

Like I said, all to ourselves.

Emily had made a puppet of herself to take along with us.  Down to the detail, it looked like her, glasses, boots, and all.

I love these horses.  They are soooo beautiful!

The kids' day started with the stagecoach and a little history...not much though, there was, after all, lots of roping to be done.

The Redding Girls Drill Team made an appearance as Toy Story 3.  The kids loved this.

And then the rodeo began.  I had no idea that any of this was real because I figured they were just showing the kids, but when we went that night, they were combining the rider's times from the morning to the evening, so I guess what we saw was basically the preliminary rounds of the real rodeo.  This is team roping - one man lassos the head and the other lassos the rear legs. Yep, I feel more American just knowing that.

This, of course, was unique to the kids' show.  Smokey even gave every kid a bandanna with his face on it.

K had a little help from Mom but is pretty convinced that she alone got this shot! :-) She got some pretty good shots but this was the best one.

McGruff the police dog also made an appearance and gave out sticker badges.

That night we went back with Dad, Nana and Poppy to see the "real" rodeo and stay up as late as the adults.

We bought better seats for this one.  :-)  At first I was worried we didn't need to since that morning we were up a little and it was very easy to see from everywhere we went, but, after talking with K about the "cow wrestling" as her favorite part, and Em getting angry at her and completely denying the presence of any cows, I found out she hadn't really seen anything all morning. When we got there that night, and she screamed at me, "Mom! There are  horses!", I knew we had chosen correctly.

It's not such a bad thing that she makes us buy better seats...I mean, it was pretty cool...we were so close we were getting mud kicked up into our faces!

These are the guys lined up in their cages and getting ready to get bucked by a horse.  Sound fun? 

It was pretty intense and fascinating to watch them.

This may have been the most humorous thing that happened all night...they opened the gate and the horse stood still, stock still.

I just like this photo of the horse...his job, once the rider lassos the calf, is to keep tension on the line until he ties it up. The horses do so well understanding their jobs and paying attention to the details.  I was quite impressed with them.

This is K's favorite event.  The rider jumps from his own horse onto the steer and wrestles it to the ground.  Fastest time without hurting the steer wins.

This was the funniest thing we saw all night.  They call it mutton bustin'.  Kids have to sign up in a lottery system for the privilege of attempting to ride a sheep.  All of them fell off.  All were crying. And we were all dying laughing! This little girl did the best.

All the sheep gathered together at the side.  We decided they must be discussing who got their kid off the quickest and whose was crying the loudest.

Well, okay, this little boy was happy when he got done.

Of course the Clydesdales made their formal appearance that night.

I know it is hard to tell what I liked best...so pretty.

This driver is impressive!  He has a separate set of reigns for each pair of horses and has to control each one.  He can turn the carriage on a dime, with no movement of the rear wheels, have the horses trot sideways to turn a corner and do a million amazing things.  He didn't smile or wave the entire time.  ;-)

Well, we had a great time, and, as I said before, for some reason I feel a little more American simply because I enjoyed myself at a rodeo.  Embracing our western heritage side makes me glad to be here!

We went to Sacramento the next morning and I am pleased to report that my mother's melanoma surgery went better than expected, no graft necessary and less severe than expected.  Praise the Lord!! Thank you for your prayers! 

Tomorrow Dad starts vacation and gets to see his first soccer game, though it is K's last soccer game and then we begin to plan our little road trip.  Yeehaw!! God Bless!

May is Chaos! Yippee!

Why hello all! We are in the midst of a crazy May...mainly because we did it to ourselves, but ah, the reward will be worth the price!  I was planning to do a post about life on a ranch just to give you an idea of all that goes on, but after remembering to take pics of sand being delivered, I failed to take pics of anything else, so that post will have to wait until summer.  I continue to be amazed at the 'amounts of things' we deal with - like 50 bales of hay every three weeks - and we are a small fry operation!  On this day, I had 23 tons of sand delivered to my arena and it didn't even make a dent in the overall depth of sand, it simply disappeared into the space as if falling into a black hole.

Twenty three tons is TWO of these full to the brim!

At least the girls got to play before we spread it all out.  Em was running and running and running...

...and jumping into it like a pile of leaves.

K took breaks out of the sun...

...as did our fatso.  The clothes really do make him look fat!  He is fat, but not that fat!  It was 90 degrees and they wanted to know why I took his outfit off. He was, after all, their chef!

This was a sandball fight that was about to begin.  Thankfully I saw that sneaky little grin and realized what was about to happen.  As it stands I still could not get all the sand out of Emily's hair.

Dad finished the tree house!!  He let them paint the inside while he painted the outside. Em's says: Dad built this. K's says: 2015, Monday, May 4th.

Once school is over, I am kicking them out all day long!

We have had quite a bit of wind and even an earthquake.  The only joy the wind brings is that it clears out the haze.  Yes, we have been hot enough to have summer haze already.  With the air clear once more, I had to take a pic.

This past week they had a kindergarten career fair at one of the local colleges.  I thought this was crazy but apparently over 1000 kids show up, and we were amongst them this year.

Our first station was a musician.  This was very interesting and I had high hopes for the day.

But this was our next station and she talked for the entire eight minutes and I was not so confident any longer.

Yep, and that's why...

Overall, it ended up being pretty interesting but I sure am glad I home school and only need to do it once and not every year. :-)

These robots were sumo fighting...promoting science camps.

This guy was funny.  He wanted kids to know not to be scared of him when he looks like that and is crawling around in the smoke so he crawled around on the ground and grabbed kids by the ankle and yanked them across the grass.  They were scared giggling and we were dying of laughter!

One day we met Nana at Turtle Bay...our favorite little place to visit.

The butterfly tent is back.

K was waiting oh so patiently for a butterfly to land on her but it never did happen.  I felt bad so we decided to go let the parakeets land on us instead.

They were practicing for their show for this summer and let us watch.

Em always drops the nectar on the ground, but at least this time she held it half way upright.

K got to volunteer in the practice show.

And Em got bored and made her own show.

Em has been asking for a fish for a very long time.  I found this entire kit with filter and heater and all the fixings at a garage sale for $10 so I bought it.  But, she has to buy it back from me.  We are using the bank we got at the career fair to fill with money and learn lots of money lessons while the tank sits empty on the counter, waiting for her.  We will see how long it takes her to earn the money.  We have an endless supply of jobs but she is not exactly a "go-getter" when it comes to doing work. It helped her to lose another tooth, but we will see how she does.  I know I can sell it for more than that at my own garage sale if she doesn't make it. :-)  Or her sister will buy it.

Our pursuit of healthier food is going pretty well.  I have only fallen off the band wagon a couple of times and honestly have finally started wanting the good stuff and not really desiring the bad stuff - except for drinks - so this is me trying coconut water with lime and ice water.  It takes time but I like it now. I am making grain free tortillas and making all our meals at home from as much scratch as I can handle.  I am not crazy but trying to do things in moderation and control the days I can.  You can see the BBQ supplies in the background.  When people are over, we eat with them.  Moderation.

We had a nice little BBQ for Monther's Day...just my Aunt and Uncle and my parents.

You know you are in a drought when you see clouds like this and do nothing to protect your stuff from rain.  It is crazy.  We don't often see clouds, but even when we do, we don't see rain from them.  I guess these did finally rain further east from us, but they didn't drop more than a hundred drops on us.  :-(  

Well, one day of school left!!  The rodeo tomorrow. Sacramento on Thursday and Friday for Mom's next surgery. K's last soccer game Saturday and we finally get a vacation starting Sunday!  A real one! M will be off for a month and we will actually leave the ranch together for the first time since we moved in last August!  Can't wait!

We took Em to an eye therapist and had her evaluated.  We don't know the results yet but I do know that she is still seeing double a significant portion of the time and it looks like her peripheral vision might be only ten degrees off center (yes, you and I see past 180 degrees). Her ophthalmologist doesn't think this doctor can do anything for her and did not recommend spending the money to see him.  Sadly, I learned a while back that sometimes it is safer not to listen exclusively to your doctor but I am also out on a limb with this one.  Please pray that as he looks at Em's tests and history God will give him great wisdom to know what he can and cannot do to help her. Pray that he will be honest if he cannot help her. Thank you!

God bless!!