Long week

What a week! It's been long, but good. Friday, my mom came up to spend the night. She arrived in time for the pep rally at the school. John did a goofy sketch with one of his middle school students. It was pretty funny. The student came out in the opponent's colors, trash talking our school, and John came out wearing jeans, long sleeved shirt, a big belt buckle, and a football helmet, and he roped the student and "calf-tied" him. It was so funny! The kids were laughing so hard! They don't know this side of John, so I'm glad it gets to come out some. He and the middle school student (and his cheerleader sister) came up with it Wednesday night when we were having dinner with their family. It came up because John wanted to learn out to throw a lasso, as he had just succeeded in steer wrestling. Yes, you read that correctly! John wrestled a steer and got him to the ground! The Youth Rodeo term for the event is "chute dogging". The "cowboy" holds on to the steers' horns as they come out of the chute, and he has to wrestle him to the ground. I missed seeing the successful round. They called up to the house and said to send me and Grace out, so we saw them try again. Unfortunately, the ground was soaked because it had poured earlier that afternoon, so it was hard for them to get a good footing to get the steer down. After the wrestling, we got to ride a horse. I got on first, but the horse wasn't responding to me, so I let John have a turn. He put Grace up there with him. She wasn't too sure about it! She really didn't like it when the horse started trotting, so John stopped and let her get down. She was so cute up there, though, sitting in her daddy's lap on the saddle. 

The reason my mom came up was to ride together Saturday up to a family reunion. It's my mom's dad's family. They get together every year to celebrate my granddad and his twin sister's birthday. They never missed celebrating a birthday together for 79 years, until he passed away last summer. But the family still got together. In the past, there were 4 sets of twins who attended, all related, but this year, only 1 half of each of the 4 sets were there. It was fun to see everyone. I haven't seen most of those family members in about 5 years. But it was a really long day. We drove 4 hours there, stayed 4 hours, and drove 4 hours back. It was so hard! I'll never do that again! But I had plans Friday night (the football game) and Sunday morning/afternoon, so I had to get back. We were supposed to see a friend of mine at her mom's house before she deploys with the Air Force, but it didn't work out. I was pretty bummed that I didn't get to see her.

Ok, this post has been sitting in my "drafts folder" for a couple of days, so I'm going to post it even though it's not finished. The rest of the weekend was good, and this week has been good too! More to come later!