Rodeo Austin

The blog has been on the sidelines for the last few weeks while Reese and I traveled. (Following our great Iowa adventure she, of course, ended up sick, so we had to tack on some recovery time as well.)

The second weekend in March we took Reese to the Austin Rodeo. I regret to inform you that we forgot our camera, so we don't have pictures to post and re-live the experience with. We thought the rodeo would be a huge hit with Reese since she loves Kim and Ehren's chickens and she can't get enough of farm animal books and noises.

Within minutes of entering the fair grounds at the rodeo, we began to re-think our adventure. The first animals we saw were two longhorns. Reese was in her jogging stroller and as soon as we approached the fence near the longhorns, she began screaming and trying to crawl out of her stroller. (The buckles hindered her progress which made her even more hysterical.) She didn't stop screaming until she had her arms wrapped FIRMLY around daddy's neck.

We left the longhorns and thought we'd check out the milking exhibit...more crying and hiding from animals. We skipped the petting zoo and went to the stock yards to walk around.
Unfortunately since it was the opening weekend for the rodeo, the only animals around were the goats and a few horses.

With smaller crowds around and LOTS of baby goats to admire Reese finally calmed down and began to enjoy the animals. She loved watching the goats and watched several rounds of junior equestrian events in the arena.

With her fears slightly assuaged, we took Reese back to the petting zoo. She and daddy spent almost twenty minutes petting the goats, deer, and llamas while mommy watched. On second examination the longhorns turned out not to be as scary as she first thought, although she never warmed up to the Borden cow from the milking demo.

All in all, I think her favorite parts of the visit were climbing on piles of hay and inspecting all the tractors. We'll see how things go next year.