Pee-Wee Rodeo

Last Saturday was the pee-wee rodeo at the good ole Kern County Fair. "Rodeo" may be a bit of an overstatement. There was roping (on a roping dummy), ribbon pulling, stick horse racing and dummy cow milking. Emma participated in the latter two. In hindsight, we should have signed her up for all four.....there were only 5 participants and only one entered all four events.

She took her participation very seriously!

Is there anything cuter than a little girl in Wranglers and a cowboy hat?

Here she is preparing for the big ride - notice how she's holding her hat in case her horse takes to bucking! :-) She rode her stick horse around a post 5 feet away from the starting line and then back. She came in fourth, although judging was difficult as the whole thing lasted about 9 seconds. They could have made it a little more difficult for this age group.

This is the dummy cow milking. All they had to do was milk it enough to have a drop come out when they tipped the cup upside down. Again, they should have made them fill the cup half way or something because this event took about 5 1/2 seconds. She got 5th. Darn!

Here she is with her ribbons. She was disappointed that she didn't get the 4 foot tall trophy for first place (I can't say that I felt the same!). :-) I should have taken a picture of them. It was kind of ridiculous. She had a lot of fun and had a rather large cheering section that she was very proud of.

I don't have any photos of Jake's events, but he was there 4 nights. He and his partner won the "sorting, in and by" on the last night. There are 11 steers numbered 0-10 and they had to sort the odds and evens and put them in two separate pens. The team that does this the fastest wins. He and Danny did it in 57 seconds. They were hoping for belt buckles, but they won duffel bags (or as all of the other cowboys were saying, purses) and a small check that should cover about half the cost of entering. He said he also would have rather had a 4 foot tall trophy!

There's always next year! :-)