This year we had the full Stock Show experience. It started on a warm January day a few weeks ago when we watched the parade through downtown. It is almost two hours of horses — cowboys, rodeo queens, Texas rangers, Mexican riders, horses with braids, horses with their nails painted, jumping horses, horses pulling wagons, ponies pulling wagons, if it is possible to do with a horse then it was there — immediately followed by almost two dozen street sweepers trying to wash all the “apples” off the road. The kids loved every minute of that parade.

Then on Friday, we took Grandma Anderson to the rodeo. It was so much fun! During the grand entrance, Carter just about fell into the people in front of us as he tried to point to every horse in the arena, it was too much for him to handle!

We saw all sorts of exciting events. Bareback riding:

Steer wrestling:

Bull riding:

Then we made the rounds through the barns. We saw all sorts of perfectly manicured bovine and ovine (that’s cow and sheep to you city-slickers . . . wait, we are city slickers).

Along the way we snacked on giant corn-dogs, red-velvet funnel cake, and cinnamon roasted almonds.

Another fun, but un-photographed, event we saw was the gypsy horse jumping competition. These long-tailed, furry-footed, fairy-tale looking horses pranced around the arena jumping fences — a very stark contrast to the rough-and-rumble bronc riding we had seen earlier.

By the end of the day we were pretty exhausted . . . and heavy laden with deep-fried foods!