Texas! Days 3 and 4

When Mac's brother Sam bought his house, it already had a happy topiary elephant family living in the front yard. Mac told him if he bought that house, he would get him a monkey topiary to go along with the elephants. Well, when we were taking the train to the BBQ cook-off, I noticed a garden center with these monkey topiaries hanging outside, so on Monday of our trip, we headed over there and picked one up for Sam.

We had to call Mac's dad to get the code to get into his front gate, but it was worth it to leave this surprise for Sam. I think it works quite well to have to Monkey hanging off of the big elephant's trunk! The elephants are in a little need of trimming, but you still get the idea.

After dropping off the monkey and picking up tickets to the Rodeo for the next day, we had wonderful Greek food at NicoNico's and then went on a mission to find the two art-o-mats in Houston. The one in the Whole Foods was easy enough to find. And it had some good choices for art. I was pretty excited about it.

Unfortunately, after much struggle, we determined, with the help of some Whole Foods employees that the machine was indeed Out of Order. Boo...

Lucky for us, there's another Art-o-Mat in Houston. It's much more out of the way, but after a phone call to the gallery and a little help from my phone's GPS, we were able to track down the other machine. It, too, was jammed!

But lucky for us, the guy at the gallery was nice enough to open it up and I was able to retrieve our prize:

A nice little stenciled robot to add to my collection. If you don't know about Art-o-Mats, check out their website here.

One of my favorite parts of being on vacation is the option for taking an afternoon nap. And after running around Houston, a nap was exactly what I was looking for. I thoroughly enjoyed a nice snooze in the afternoon and woke up refreshed and ready to have dinner with Mac's whole family. We went out to a nice Italian place with his parents, grandma, sister, brother and his brother's girlfriend. It was great to have the whole family together and hear some fun stories of them growing up. After dinner we went over to Sam's place and got to hang out for a bit and show him the monkey topiary in all of its glory. It was a fun way to end the evening.

On Tuesday, we met up with my friend Lacey, who was my roommate in Chicago, for an early lunch at a Vietnamese sandwich shop. It was super-tasty and great to catch up with her after not seeing her for many years. After lunch, we were still a little early for the Rodeo, so we went to the Galleria and I got to see where Mac learned to play hockey. It's a huge mall with an ice rink in the middle. I can see how hockey and ice skating can seem appealing when it's over 100 degrees out in the summer in Houston.

After leaving the Galleria, we headed to Reliant Park to take in all that the Livestock Show and Rodeo had to offer. Having never really been to a Livestock Show, it was an eye-opening afternoon, indeed. We started out at the Birthing Center where we got to see this one-hour old calf and her mama chowing down on her own placenta. The baby calf is hard to see, but she's in the bottom right corner, curled up in the hay:

We also got to see 30 minute old goats and some very, very pregnant pigs, cows and goats that were due to give birth over the next few days. It was fascinating.

On a slightly sillier note, we got to watch some "celebrity" goat milking. These were local Houston celebrities, like local radio hosts and meteorologists from the local news. It was still fun as most of them had never milked a goat before. There were given a quick lesson from students from the local ag school and then had to milk as much as they could in a certain amount of time. It was pretty amusing to see the milk occasionally get squirted in a random direction, or the bucket knocked over by a less-than-happy goat.

We also stopped by a section of the livestock show that had examples of different breeds of cattle, goats and pigs. The longhorn was, by far, the most impressive. All I have to say is: Cows are BIG!

We then moved on to the children's section, which was actually a lot of fun. Lacey had tipped us off to Mutton Bustin' over lunch and Mac and I were excited to see this ridiculous sport. In a nutshell, small children, ages 5 or 6, volunteer to hang on as tight as they can to a slightly pissed off sheep and try to stay on as long as they can. Here's a few photos of one kid's run:

Hanging on as long as he can:

Most of the contestants slide off to one side, sometimes bringing the sheep down with them:

Then, of course, a big wave for the crowd and the camera. Look, Ma, I'm fine!

At the end, the kid who stayed on the longest got a silver belt buckle, and everyone else got a certificate for participating. One of the best parts was that they introduced each kid as they were getting ready to ride the sheep and they'd say things like "This is Maverick from right here in Houston and he wants to be a ninja when he grows up and his favorite food is nachos and hot dogs!" It was really cute.

Also in the children's section, we went to the petting zoo. We got one little cup of food to feed the animals and Mac held on to it for most of the time we were in there. The goats were especially greedy and even stood up on Mac to try and get the cup of food that he was holding up. These goats were interested in a little handful:

My favorite was this little white goat who was just super cute and decided that he was going to stand on top of this pig to get a better view. That pig has infinite patience to put up with all of these baby goats:

After doing a little window shopping at some of the booths in the convention center and picking up an official Rodeo pint glass and refrigerator magnet, it was time to head into Reliant Stadium to watch the Rodeo! We saw all the classic Rodeo events including Bull Riding, Bronco Riding and Calf Roping:

In between some of the events they had a real wagon race, which was pretty impressive. They were going really fast! It's kind of the same idea as the Pierogi Races at the baseball stadium in Pittsburgh, but much more high stakes. These guys were REALLY racing!

They also had a Calf Scramble, which was a little chaotic, but really fun to watch. Basically, they line up 30 high school kids, then let 17 calfs run into the arena, and the kids have to try to catch and halter one of the calves. If they do, the prize is an actual calf, which is a really big deal for these kids. Here's the beginning of the scramble:

And finally after some Barrel Racing and more Mutton Bustin', we got to see them set up for the concert and shoot off some indoor fireworks. We only stayed for the first song of Alabama. They played "You can't play in Texas if you don't have a Fiddle in the Band". It was fun to see one song, but we decided to head out since we aren't big Alabama fans and the people around us clearly were.

On the way out of the stadium we got a nice view of the Carnival:

After leaving the Rodeo, we stopped by Valerie's apartment and got to hang out with her and her roommate for a little bit before heading back to Mac's parents' place. It was a jam-packed day and such a great way to really see some Texas Rodeo action.