mda walk and o's first rodeo!

sit back folks. this is going to be a long one...

this morning we work up BRIGHT AND EARLY for the muscular distrophy assoc "muscle walk" in monroe. my friend nicola's little boy was diagnosed with congenital muscular distrophy when he was an infant. i'm not going to pretend that i know much about this disorder, b/c i don't. but to give you a hint of how rare it is; his particular form of MD wasn't listed on the "list" on our team registration form this morning. if the md assoc doesn't have it listed then i have to assume it's really rare. so, we raised money and walked for him this morning! it was a lot of fun! the theme of the walk was "mardi gras" and nicola's husband (kaden's dad) is a t-shirt designer by trade so he did an awesome job on our team shirts (team kaden won the t-shirt contest!)

olivia and kaden

nicola and kaden in his "float"

o is terrified of the chick-fil-a cow and the sonic hotdog. this was confirmed today. they were TOO CLOSE while trying to take a pics with miss louisiana. i was trying to wave them away and they would not take my hint. oh well. if we never meet another miss la at least we have this picture with a REAL princess! :)

on our way back into ruston my mom called and said they were headed to ruston b/c my cousin was in town for the rodeo and they were going to have lunch and watch him rope. of course we joined them! let me tell you about mikey. he's probably the funniest person i know. he LOVES to have a good time and lives life to the fullest. he is FULL cowboy. his whole persona (is that the right word?) is cowboy. he's carefree; go-with-the-flow; somewhat hippy-ish. he may or may not particpate in some extra-curricular activities that could be frowned upon but that are totally acceptable in his world. ;) i think he's probably always been our favorite cousin. you know, the "cool" cousin that always gets out of family functions b/c he's off doing some cool cowboy thing... that's him. he was participating in the slack today. rodeo lesson time: the "real" rodeo night can only accomodate so many participants per event. obviously there are time contraints. but there are way more cowboys that want to ride in the event so they fill the "real" rodeo spots and then everyone else goes to the slack. the slack takes place before the rodeo. you have 1 shot. do or die. however, you can win the entire rodeo if you do well enough. the real rodeo winner is decided from the rodeo participants AND the slack participants. so, the way it was described to me; a lot of guys prefer to do the slack. they can potentially win 2 rodeos in one day. do the slack and win and then when the slack is over go do the "real" rodeo in another city. to sum this up - a slack is not like a beauty pageant preliminary. (i had to verify this with mikey's dad who is also a cowboy. he knows nothing about beauty pageants but got my drift...) sounds like a win/win to me! mikey does team roping. one guy ropes the calf's head and the other gets the feet. mikey and his partner got the head but missed the feet. i was trying to take pics so didn't see first hand who missed but i think it was mikey. oh well, you can't win them all! afterwards we hung around and o got to pet his horse! we wanted her to ride so badly but she wasn't having it. one day...

there was this guy on a horse at the rail where we were sitting that stayed there the whole time. i guess he was there in case a horse or calf got out of hand??? kind of like a clown i guess!! anyway, o loved his horse and he was nice enough to put up with her petting, screaming and running!

chatting with us during warm-ups

in action. maybe my mad photo skills threw him off... ha!

if o's foot slipped on this rail once it slipped 100 times. i was pretty nervous. mikey's dad assured me that she wouldn't be the first kid to fall through and all the people in the ring would get her. gee...that made me feel so much better! i wasn't worried about the actual fall; heck she'd land on dirt. i was more concerned with her head hitting the hard ground before she went through the rails. but nice try big mike. i'll give you credit for trying!

and she was in love! i promised her that her uncle john would get her a pony one day. time to become the favorite uncle, john juneau!! :)

i think we'll start going to these slack competitions when the rodeo is in town. at least for the forseeable future, the rodeo is too late at night for olivia. but these start at like 10-11 in the morning and go till about 1ish. and they are FREE to watch. you just gotta go park back there with the participants and their horses/trailers and walk on in! good, fun family entertainment! and i guess if you know the right ones your kids can play with their horses afterwards!

EDIT: i was told today that mikey and his partner actually tied thier calf from both ends (head and feet) with a time of 6.2 seconds! which apparently put them in the lead from the slack. so i guess depending on how the night went they could have won or at least placed (do you place in a rodeo?)! so, i'm sorry for not paying better attention! and congrats! (if you're reading this.)