A sad farewell

This weekend we took the kids to a bull riding event. We have taken the kids to rodeos since they were all small tykes. But, we recently had a trial period of the channel "VS." on our dish. Pops discovered that they have bull riding on their channel quite regularly. We recorded a LOT of bull riding. We watched a lot of bull riding. The kids love to watch the bull riding. So, it only seemed natural when a bull riding event showed up on the radar close to home, we jumped at the chance and bought tickets! Dish Network has taken away our free trial of watching bull riding. Now, if we want to continue to watch, we will have to PAY for an upgraded package. Bummer. We do not watch all that much television, so I doubt we will be upgrading. Besides, the live event is so much more exciting!

Branch is our little cowgirl. She is forever telling Pops to get her a horse. She wants so badly to sign up for mutton bustin'. We'll let you know how it goes when we get her a riding card! She couldn't be happier than sitting amidst all the folks at the bull riding!

Bud likes to go to these events. He quickly loses interest in the reason that we are there. Instead, he finds some unsuspecting person to talk with or he finds a new friend to screw around with. Wouldn't you know he managed to do both this time!?! He was sitting pretty close to another little boy and they did all kinds of boyish fake fighting and had a blast. When they were done with that, he sat and talked the other kids' dad's ear off! When we left, he got an autograph from a bull rider who asked him if he planned to ride bulls when he gets bigger. Bud thought for a bit and said, "I'm not too sure about that. But, I did ride a sheep once and it kind of just laid down when it was supposed to take off running. That was enough, I guess."

Blossom was concerned continually about the cowboys as they were bucked off the bulls. "Oh, that was a MEAN bull. {Insert mean wrinkled up nose here.}" She was eating popcorn chicken in this picture and is pretty proud of herself for finishing off the whole thing!

This bull (pardon the fuzziness, please - pretty low lighting) bucked off his rider and didn't follow protocol and go into the gate when his turn was up. Instead he ran around and around the ring and would stop and look at everyone. If someone made a move, he would lower his head down low and paw at the ground kicking dirt up in the air behind him and then he'd charge! I thought that was only in the cartoons! It was for real. It seemed as though he either wanted to play or perhaps he was trained for entertainment purposes... who knows. Funny, though!

Here is my one cowboy on a bull where everything appears to still be in the photo and the bull's legs are not "ghost-like." Have any of you taken pictures where you can see through a part of your subject to the background? Weird. I need to figure out how to make better photos in low light without a tripod!

We had a good time. 

We miss VS. 

Good bye bull riding every weekend...