Holloways in Houston: The Busiest Weekend of my Life

March is Houston Rodeo time (yeah, Lynn and Mom, I'm behind!), and I have been looking forward to going to the Rodeo for some time! It's a pretty big deal! And, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, lots of big names in country music come to Houston and play during the rodeo. For our very first rodeo experience, we decided to go see Jason Aldean play.

As is our usual custom, we also decided that we would pack as much into this weekend as possible! Friday night, we went to Katy to help our friends Jonah and Anne Marie load up their U-Haul for a move to The Woodlands. We got there a little late (oops!) and caught the tail end of the packing that day, but we helped them unload the next day in The Woodlands. Also on that Saturday, we looked at a few neighborhoods in that area, and went to a crawfish boil at our friends Chris and Marley's. THEN, at the end of the day, we went to Gallery Furniture and bought a recliner for Lan (this has been in the works for some time, and I am happy Lan finally has his fancy new recliner!).

So, you get the idea, it was a busy weekend. AND to top it all off, the Jason Aldean concert was on Sunday. So, after church, we ate CPK for lunch then headed to the Rodeo with our friends Aaron and Emily.

When you go to the rodeo, there's so much more to it than just the rodeo! There are lots of exhibits and animals and there's a carnival... there's a lot. So Emily and I really wanted to see some of the animals (namely the baby chickens) before we went to the rodeo, so Lan and Aaron dropped us off and we got to see some of the animals.

You could go in here to see cows and sheep! (See next two pictures)

The chickens!

The incubator! You could wait here to see chicks hatching. The three little blobs in the upper left hand corner are newly hatched chicks!

Baby Chicks in action!

The rodeo was... quite the experience. It was really cool! I had never seen anyone ride a bull or do barrel racing before, and we went on the last day of the finals, so we got to see the best of the best compete! And, it was held in Reliant Stadium, where they held the final four this year.

Rodeo opening parade

The rodeo began with a prayer (which I really liked) and the national anthem (complete with a really impressive fireworks show! Confession: I got a little teary eyed. What can I say? I love America). Then, the competitions.

This is one of the cowboys riding a bronc bareback!

Then, they had a competition called "Mutton Busting," and basically what happens in this competition is they strap little kids to sheep and the kids try to hold on for as long as they can. This was my favorite :) The little kids were really cute, and it was really funny. They kept interviewing the kids during the afternoon, and they have some pretty interesting practice methods! Most of the kids said they practiced on their dog, and one little girl said she practiced on her brother. I think she misunderstood the question :)

After all this, Jason Aldean played!! We all really enjoyed his concert and had a fun time people watching during it... Jason also had fireworks, and his stage rotated (how cool is that??).

Some pictures from the concert...