Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Spokane Interstate Fair

We ended up with free tickets to the fair and I think we made the most of it. The theme this year was Bee the Best you can Bee:
Of course there are your traditional fair items, like who can grow the biggest piece of fruit. Yes, pumpkin is a fruit. (I wasn't aware of that before I went to the fair.)
Alyx tried the Army's vertical climbing wall. I was pretty impressed with her as she got about 80% all the way up. Not an easy task.You may or may not know that Christian is a huge fan of bullriding, will watch it for hours on TV, has multiple toys that are only about bullriding and has said more than once that he's going to do that someday. Not that I'm encouraging this as a career but when there was Mutton Bustin' at the fair I couldn't help myself. This is an actual sport, somewhere Christian is now on record as having done it. They treated it just like a little rodeo, they even sang the Star Spangled Banner before beginning and had a clown (sounds wrong to call him a sheep fighter). This guy basically took off running with the sheep so he could pick each kid up right away once they came off. You are supposed to ride the sheep for 6 second while it is frantically trying to make it from the chute back to it's friends at the end of the mini arena.

This is the "staging" area behind the chutes. These are the big sheep and the little sheeprider.
This is Christian's biggest fan up in the stands.
Essential protective gear; vest and helmet. This pose was in response to me asking if he was ready to go. His version of thumbs up.
Here he is standing over his sheep ready to get in the chute.
If you look close you can see him on the sheep, holding on with all he's got. The guy actually leans over the top of the kids and shows them where to put their arms and legs. Christian said he told him not to worry about hurting the sheep, just to hold on as hard as possible.
He rode for 4 seconds but that went by too fast for me to get a picture. Four seconds, not bad for a 35 pound first timer. He said before hand that he wasn't going to cry. He said it because he was last in line and basically every single kid was crying, even the big ones. He didn't cry and the announcer made a point to inform the crowd that he wasn't crying and what he was doing was spitting the dirt out of his mouth. This pic is after he's closed his eyes so they can remove his dirt/mud covered helmet because when he hit the ground it was face first. You can see the dirt on his face and running off his clothes.
This would br the the "Hey, I'm proud of you kid" from his sister. (Right after she hugged him.) Notice the gesture from Chrisitan. I sense a tough guy trend coming on.

1 comment:

The Big Red Dogs said...

I love your blog!!! Wow they are growing up quick!
I can't wait till my boys are big enough to mutton bust... We'll call Christian for tips!