Some Kind of Tough and Some Kind of Nasty

Saturday night took us back to our small-town roots when we attended the local Hamel rodeo. It's pretty shocking how different things can be just 12 short miles outside of our cozy little suburb. Good-bye J. Crew, hello bedazzler.

We pulled up to a lot filled with American made cars, horses, cowboys with big old buckles, and an announcer who had enough one-liners to keep my blog fresh for another year (see blog title). All of the girls got into it with an assortment of plaids, and one cowboy hat. Katie gets extra bonus points for parking her Lexus at home and driving up in Ryan's Dodge pick-up.

Now, never mind that the old man who sang the National anthem with a brilliant country twang forgot the lyrics half-way through, or the fact that there was actually no cotton candy even though Marie promised it...this was the event for the ages. In fact, it was THE biggest rodeo in MN. It took my right back to my childhood cheering for Uncle Arthur doing his calf-penning.

The biggest event of the night, as billed by the announcer, was the Kiesner Family Rodeo. In fact, the crowd was pre-warned by about 5 minutes to get our cameras ready. This is what shows up:

Now I don't want to dog on the Kiesners because they are out there making a good honest living, but we are talking about a kid twirling a little gun shooting at balloons, and some tricky lasso moves that I am pretty sure Ryan could master if he tried for like 2 days.

The REAL event of the night was when a bucking bronco of a horse had a little to much giddyap in its step and got its hooves stuck in the fence, and bent the fence in HALF right into the crowd. I was too busy screaming for the horse (or maybe somethign along the lines of "Don't break your leg...") to realize it had busted right through into the crowd. The announcer recovered brilliantly by saying "And the two ladies in the front row didn't even spill their beer..Let's give it up!"

They tried to diversify the music for the city folk. We went from "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" straight into "Yeah by Usher." It really couldn't have gotten any better. It was the best of both worlds.