This time of year is cowboy time around these parts. The Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo gives us all a reason to dust off our cowboy boots and practice our drawls. This year it started with the Stock Show parade on January 19.

This parade is 100% non-motorized.

We always love the longhorns — or “Daddy cows” as Carter calls them.

It’s a fairly long parade!

Then there was western week at school, January 29.

“Hi, cowboy!”

February 8 we made our way down to the Stock Show and Rodeo for the main event.

We had great seats and . . . we . . . were . . . excited!

The bronc riders started us off with style.

Whiplash the cowboy monkey was a hit.

And the bull riding was a real nail-biter! (Except that not a single one of those cowboys managed to make it to 8 seconds. Those bulls were really fired up.)

After the rodeo we were off to the petting zoo, funnel cake, and other stock show must-do’s.

These two kids couldn’t get enough of the animals. We went through all the barns twice and they still wanted to see more animals. I don’t know how they kept going after almost 7 hours and no stroller. Needless to say, we had to carry them in from the car and they didn’t wake up until morning!