JULY 5, 2012 -- RODEO OF THE OZARKS

FAMILY EVENING AT THE RODEO

We had a really productive day and a really fun evening!!  It was a good day!

We slept in a bit since we were up so late last night.  After lunch, we had "Mom's School" and the kids worked on their summer books.  Benjamin and Joseph finished off their "Family Life" merit badge and then Joseph finished off the DVD portion of his eagle project!  Benjamin also started working on his "Theater" merit badge.  

This evening at 5:30pm, we headed off to the rodeo.  The owner of AERT, where Vernon is on the Board of Directors, gave us tickets to the rodeo and it included dinner before.  We had "priority parking" as part of the "Buckle Club!"  We were wishing we all had big belt buckles to wear as we rubbed shoulders with the "buckle club!"  We had "Golden Corral" catered dinner -- delicious chicken, steak, cheesy potatoes and dessert!  One of the best parts is that the room was air conditioned and we sat right by the vent and actually got cold!!!

We told the kids to soak it up!!!  Rachel was all "google eyed" at the girls in their fancy riding shirts, boots and spurs!"

After we ate, we headed over to the rodeo arena.  They were just starting the first event -- sheep riding with kids ages 4-7.  Rachel and David were begging to do it -- but you had to pre-register or I would have!  We went in the arena to look for our seats and to our happy surprise, our tickets were for the fancy seat back section that was covered!!  Go Dad!  We had sun for about 1 hour as it went down and then it was quite nice!

We watched kids ride or rather fall off sheep, we watched teams of 3 kids wrestle a sheep and put a pair of boxers on it!  We then watched the bareback riding, barrel racing, steer wrestling, roping, bronco riding with a saddle, and bull riding.  It was a good rodeo.  Other than the "trash talk" from the announcer and the clown dude it was a really fun evening!!




One "entertainment" portion they had was a man named "John Payne" who is called "The One Armed Bandit."  He was a cowboy and then lost his right arm/hand to an accident with electricity.  He didn't lose his spirit and now had this rodeo side show he travels with and he performed here in AR.  It was pretty cool to see 2 real buffalo come out into the arena.  They were huge!!!

One of the funnest moments of the whole night was when that first bucking bronco came out of the chute and the cowboy rode for several seconds and then flew off threw the air and landed.  David's face could have exploded with excitement and he burst with energy and cheered and hollered "That was so cool!!!!  That was so cool!!!"  It was great!!!!  It was fun to see the kids enjoy the evening so much!!! 

Rachel would have loved to have been barrel  racing!  She would love to learn to ride!!!

We had a good night!!!!  And even by the end, Benjamin was watching and participating a bit!  That was major progress from the tortured looking young man that sat in his chair with his headphones in looking totally abused.  Earlier when I asked him why he didn't want to go, he said, "This is going to be a place where is will likely be very loud and noise AND it is going to stink.  Why would I want to go there?"