Mesquite Rodeo

Grandma and Grandpa Brown are always ready for sharing adventures with the kids.  This time we made a trip to the Mesquite Rodeo.  It was fun, despite Lindi wanting to have free reign of the bleachers.  My favorite part was watching the only legal form of child abuse in Texas (putting your kid on top of a sheep and letting it run free)!  The announcers made the whole night enjoyable with their wise cracks and jokes.  I loved it!

Something I want my kids to always remember is how much their Grandma loves horses.  She shared the following with us:

In high school, my uncle LN Johnson gave me my first horse, Cannonball. To have a horse of my own was a dream I had from the time I knew what a horse was. Cannonball was a reject because he was too slow and none of LN's kids wanted him. He was just an ugly plow horse. What they didn't know was that he had a specific skill set. With that skill set, we rose to the top of the high school rodeo world and my senior year, we won the regional championship and later that same year won the district 4-H championship and advanced to the state championship. Not too bad for a girl that had to borrow a saddle and rent a horse trailer. We competed against girls that had very expensive trailers with their names painted across them and their saddles and bridles and clothes were beautiful. Their trailers were pulled by color coordinated pickups. We would drive up with a very humble, ugly trailer pulled by a paneled van. We were an eye-sore but we could compete and win against all those fancy high dollar horses. It was a miracle.

I love that.  I love it because she was passionate about it and she was good, but she was forced to be humble.  I want my kids to always strive to be the best, even if they aren't the fanciest or the richest.