Cowboy Church

Friday night, Wayne and our friend Joe, took the kids to the rodeo. I already had previous plans with some girlfriends, so you know what that means...no pictures. I heard that they all had lots of fun, but didn't get to see too much of the rodeo thanks to having to chase Miss Elsie all over the place. Wayne even ran into an ex-girlfriend and her family. She has a little girl a few months younger than Kya, so she and Kya hung out quite a bit. Kya has become real good at finding little girlfriends wherever we go. She is our little social bug.

Since I didn't get to go to the rodeo and take pictures for our blog, I did the next best thing..brought my camera to Cowboy Church. Sunday morning, instead of going to our regular church, we went to the Cowboy Church where Wayne and Southland were leading worship. Cowboy Church is held at the rodeo's, so that all the cowboys, cowgirls and crew can have a place to worship since they are usually on the road and don't have time to go searching for a church.


Wayne, Roy, Kevin and Mike leading worship behind the grandstands.
Seth was their helper. He cannot wait to actually be able to play in Southland himself.

Rev. Bob Harris

Christian Cowboy Poet. I wish I could get a copy of the poem he recited. It was very touching.

The horses and bulls eating and roaming out in the arena.

After service, the kids couldn't wait to go over and check out the animals themselves.

Elsie wanted so badly to be inside the arena with all those bulls and horses. She was super quick and I would catch her trying to climb over the railings or even slide under them. For obvious reason, it would not be safe for her to be in there!

Our little Cowgirl

I can't believe I was actually able to get such a good picture of all 5 kids! Is this a sign that they are getting older? The two girls are Kassidy and Katie. They are the daughters of some friends we met at a cowboy church last year. Since then our families have really hit it off. It is so nice to have such good friends with so many things in common.

Katie taught Kya how to slide down the railings. She is wearing tennis shoes, because she out grew her boots and I haven't been able to find her a new pair yet. I only get the kids boots at either Target or Walmart, because I refuse to pay $50 for boot every year. At Target/Walmart, I can get them for $12 and of course, Elsie get Kya's hand-me-downs.

The bulls stayed far away from the people/kids, but the horses would all come up looking to be petted and of course food. It was pretty amazing to have over 30 horses come up to the railings.

A couple of cowboys deep in conversation. This is Wayne and Andy.

Princess and the Pea?

I came into the living room to find our little princess sound asleep on our wood coffee table. Not a comfortable place to sleep I imagine, but obviously it isn't bothering her.
I love how she thought to get her baby doll and blanket before zonking out!

Preschool Bootcamp

I took Seth to his first Preschool Bootcamp today. It is held at our local library and it is a time for the kids to sing with motions, jump around and have story time.

Seth participated, but he can be a tad bit shy when in a group of people he doesn't know. Plus, since this was his first time, he didn't know any of the songs, so he would just watch at times.

Here he is in circle time sing/motioning the song If You're Happy & You Know It.
Elsie got to join her big brother for story time. She started off listening pretty well at first....

but then became a little antsy. I went and sat down with her and she did better.

Afterwards, they allow the kids to have free play in the play area.

The park is just across the parking lot, so we headed on over there for a bit too.

I cracked up at this picture, because he stopped in the middle of climbing to pose for me.

Check out Elsie's hair. The slide caused static on every child that went down it.

Seth and Elsie both did really well at climbing on this curved ladder thing. I didn't get any pictures of Elsie, because I felt I needed to be right next to her for fear of her falling thru to the ground.

Look who is on the Big Boy swing!

Family Fun at the OC Fair

Thanks to Wayne and his band playing the Orange County Fair (see post below), our family also got the chance to go and have some fun. After the concert and the guys loading up all their equipment, we did what everyone who goes to the fair does.......ate yummy, fattening food!

We started off by getting this large BBQ Chicken Pizza made on an extremely large piece of French bread.
Followed by these oh so yummy Funnel Cakes! mmmmmmmm

I only had a couple of bites, but oh my were they delicious. I wanted to get a BBQ Corn, in fact it was all I talked about for months before the fair, but I was way to stuffed. Now I am regretting not getting it, because they are so good.

These two skinny kids of mine DEVOURED this funnel cake. Literally, it was "Now you see it, Now you don't". This was their first funnel cake and I am sure we made fans out of them.

When I told Kya that we were going to the fair, the first thing out of her mouth was "I am going to ride the pony's and Grandma is going to let me." What? I was cracking up for two reasons. 1. she remembered the pony's from last year and how Wayne and I wouldn't let them ride due to them being so expensive to ride and we have our own horses to ride for crying out loud. 2. The fact that she said "Grandma" will let her, shows me that she has her Grandma's number. If Mommy says no, just ask Grandma! As you can see by the pictures below, she was right and Grandma did indeed buy the kids tickets to ride the pony's.

Kya riding Lil Jim

Seth riding Peanut

Elsie riding Shorty

Our next stop was Centennial Farms. Here they got to see lots of animals including Cows, Sheep, Goats, Chickens, Chicks, Rabbits, Pigs, etc.


Kya's favorite were the baby chicks inside of this little hen house. One even pecked her little finger, but it didn't hurt.

That dark figure in the right corner is a black sheep. Seth liked it until it started baaaing loudly.

Checking out the fat little piglets. Kya and Seth even got to pet them some!

I was cracking up at these family pictures, because after we took them, I noticed a sign saying that the plants behind us are Tobacco! and None of smoke.

Then we had our parents join us for another picture. We all look to be pretty far away, but otherwise it turned out cute.

I snapped this picture of Elsie interacting with my dad. She kept trying to put his hat back on his head. It just looks so peaceful here in the gardens.

We also hooked up with some friends for a bit. Jolee is a couple of years older than Kya and last year she was being little Miss Bossy towards Kya. This year though, Kya became the Little Boss and dragged Jolee all over the place. All the kids wanted to hold Jolee's hand, but Elsie finally settled in on holding Kya's. They walked around like this for a while. Cute eh?

Next on stop was watching Weird Al's 3-D Brain. Really was a lame movie about how the brain works, but Kya told me later that she liked it. Good, at least I wasted some time for a reason huh?

Lastly, we found our way to the Kid Zone. I wish we had found it earlier in the day, as it was a hit with all the kids. They got to play in a giant sand box, have story time, hammer nails into wood, build all sorts of things with Lego's, etc.



As you know, Kya loves to make things in sand. She also made a little friend to play with for a while.

Just a shot of the sand box and I still couldn't get it all into the picture. Pretty cool!

Seth played in the sand box some, but he preferred story time and building things with Lego's more.

Elsie on the other hand fell asleep during the movie and stayed that way for most of the Kid Zone.

Seth received two free books for participating in story time! We love to read here, so that was a very nice unexpected surprise. This was also the last picture I took due to my battery dieing right afterwards.

I love the OC Fair and can't wait until next year to go back. Thanks mom for spoiling us too!

Southland plays at the OC Fair

Wayne and his band, Southland, played the Orange County Fair for the second year. They played on the Main Stage at 11:15 on a Saturday. Great day and time to play!

Roy is on Bass, Wayne is Lead Vocal/ Electric Guitar, Kevin is on the Drums and Mike is Rhythm Guitar.

The Schedule
Another picture of the band.

We even conned my dad to stand guard over the CD table. Since I was busy watching the kids, I only had to go to the table to help when a customer was there. Thanks Dad!

Besides the normal Fair people watching them play, some of my family also came. My mom, Uncle Jim, Aunt Pam and Uncle Doug. It was great seeing them.

We also had a few members of our church come out to support them.

I took these pictures when they first started to play, so it looks like not many are there, but by the end these seats and the tables behind them were filled up! We hope to be able to go back next year.