Homecoming Weekend

As I mentioned in one of my posts last week, our town's Homecoming was held last weekend.  The festivities began with a rodeo parade on Friday afternoon.  We had a great time!  We always sit on our church lawn and this year so many of our church family came too and we all just had a fun time together.  Get ready for picture overload!

One of the rodeo queen contestants was a granddaughter of one of our church families.  We all held up signs supporting her throughout the parade.

And, there she is, along with the other queen candidate.   Our hopeful winner is the one in the red, white, and blue.

There are always old cars..

And dream cars...

...and other modes of transportation!  This one looks like it would be a fun ride!

Louie the lightning bug!
There are always colorful characters...

Of course, you can't have a parade without 'Old Glory" and the Oklahoma State flag.

 The One Arm Bandit!  He is the special entertainment at the rodeo and he really puts on a great show.

Saturday afternoon was the annual Firetruck Parade.  Firetrucks from all over the area come to participate and it's really neat to see all the different trucks. I'll only share just a few because there were SO many!
Smokey the Bear is on this truck!

This is our friend, Henry, picking up candy!  I always tease him that he takes candy from children and it looks like this little boy with the chainsaw is armed and ready to take Henry on if necessary!   This little boy, that I didn't know, was more interested in showing me his chainsaw than he was about watching the parade.  He just kept coming over to me on the church steps and showing me how it worked, as the firetrucks were going by with their sirens blaring!   He was too cute!

Saturday night, Allan and I went to the rodeo.  We haven't been in several years and there had been some renovations made to the arena so we decided to go.

The entrance to the arena was something new that we hadn't seen before...a tribute to Todd Whatley &  Lige Hammock, whom the arena is named after.

The crowning of the rode queen was first.  "T" waiting for the results to be announced.

And she won!!  We were so excited for her and her family!  She is a beautiful girl!

There was a tribute to a lady who was rodeo royalty many years ago and she passed away last fall.  She was one of our local teachers and loved by a lot of people.  The rider-less horse was led around the arena in honor of Mrs. Betty Muntz.  It was a very moving moment.

Next was the National Anthem sang by one of our local girls.  She did an amazing job! 

 The rodeo was great.   It was all so exciting, especially the bull riding.  The one event that I can not watch is the calf-roping.  That just breaks my heart to watch.  I sit there, secretly rooting for the calf, hoping that he gets away!

One event that is always so funny is the 'dressing a calf' event.  Teams from our local banks have to race to put a pair of panties on a calf.  I'm so proud to say that OUR bank was the winner this year!

The clown was a hoot!  He had some really funny jokes and we laughed a lot!  I can't remember his name but it was announced that he was one of the top 5 rodeo clowns in the nation.

The main attraction was John Payne-The One Arm Bandit.  He was great as always, even though the animals didn't fully cooperate with him this year.  We have seen his act before and it's always amazing!  In years past, he has had long horn cattle that he made load on top of the trailer.  This year it was two buffalo!  He would get one of them up there and as he went off to round the other one up, the one on the trailer would decide to come back down.  This went on and on and on and he just wasn't able to get them both up there this time.  Still, he is a great act!  We had a fun time!

This weekend was also Colby's birthday weekend  and he wasn't able to come home to celebrate with us this time.  I'm hoping he'll come in the next few weeks.  He was in good hands with friends and other family though and ended up with two strawberry cakes!

I don't know why this picture won't flip...grrrr.  Anyway, Colby loved his "Thunder Up" cake and all he asked for his birthday was for Thunder to win...and they did!!

I can't believe my baby is 23!  I'm so proud of the young man he's become.