Rodey Yo

July has melted away.  

Melted.

Melted like vanilla ice cream down my children's chins in the sunshine.

Melted and left memories in its place.

Zoe spilled water on my laptop.  That was like a month ago.  That is one reason why I have not been blogging much.  It was only like 3 ounces, and when it spilled I immediately wiped it with a towel, then flipped it upside down on the towel, dried it for a few minutes on low with my hairdryer, and let it sit up side down for a few days.  After those few days, I crossed my fingers said a prayer that it would work, and pushed the power button.  It came on.  Hallelujah.  It worked fine, except for one thing: when I had it plugged it to charge, it wouldn't charge the battery.  It would work, but would say that it wasn't charging.  I thought that I had better back it up, and I was in the middle of backing it up - the backup program had installed, but it said that it couldn't do it because of some firewall thing or something.  Then I closed it up to tend to my motherly duties, and the next time I opened it, no did work.  We took it in today to hopefully get fixed.  It stinks not having it.  And of course I worry about all the stuff I have on there (pictures and videos for the last 13 months).  It makes me grateful for my blog.  At least the pix/videos I have blogged are backed up.  For now I am using Weston's computer, and luckily I still have pictures on a couple different SD cards.  I was just looking at them, and saw how many things that I missed blogging about.  

Things like...

Yup.  The annual rodeo.  

It's fun. It's small.

We like it.

It starts off with kiddy games,

like the sack race,

and like the fill-the-squishy-ball-with-water-and-run-it-to-the-bucket-and-see-which-team-can-fill-up-that-empty-bucket-first game.  

That one really tires them out.

Jiles was a little shy about it.

Zoe straight out didn't like.

Until they rang the free-for-everyone-ice-cream bell.

They do that twice.

And, boy, do those kiddies go a running.

They also have face/hand painting.

Horsey rides.

The chicken chase.

We donated a chicken.  

That little chicken made for one happy little girl (the girl that caught the chicken).

Spencer caught an ornery rooster.

He didn't get to keep it, though, because the owners wanted him back. 

I was totally cool with that.

Oh yeah, and the candy bomb.  Candy is stuffed inside some kind of explosive, and all of the kids gather around, and then it explodes and it rains candy for the kids to run and pick up.  

This year it rained candy all right, and the kids ran to get to it, but it was all burnt to a crisp.  It was pretty funny.  

Ezra took this picture of our friend Becky while Weston and I were doing the egg toss.  (We tied for 1st, by the way.  We were huckin' that egg super far.  It broke on me, of course.) 

His and hers bathroom doors..

Getting ready to watch the steer riding...

Kate and her bff.

Woohoo!  Ride that steer!

This kid riding the steer, who is 12, has a bandaged elbow because the night before the rodeo he and his family were at our house, and while he was going down the zip line he ran into a big fat branch that stopped him dead in his zip line track and scraped up his arm rather nicely.

I'm thinking that he likes getting bruises and scrapes and stuff.

Ezra and a buddy.

Calf roping anyone?

Our buddy and sometimes mechanic, Bolt Turner, likes to watch the cowboys as he sips his drink and yell,

"Come on!  Give 'em HECK!"

Er something like that.

Did you know that a horse;s eye is like a mirror?

Isn't that cool?  

That's me in the horse's eye taking the picture.

Go try it. All you need is a camera and a horse's eye.