Livin' in the Wild Wild West

We recently went to the Laredo International Fair and Exposition.

Howdy, pardner.

For those of you who may not know, this is where the 4H kids and Future Farmers of America kids show the animals they've been raising all year, hoping to sell them for a lot of money.

Would he be as excited if he knew he was dinner?

Like other fairs and expositions, there's also a crafts and food part. When I was in high school, my home economics teacher encouraged me to enter the cake decorating contest. I baked a bundt cake and decorated it like a clown. It was quite a piece of work and very heavy. The cake was the clown’s ruffle and I added a Styrofoam ball for a head and cone for hat. I came in second place. I was beat out by something that looked like this, except whoever did it didn't use any color or cupcakes and was ugly and totally unoriginal.

The next year, I thought I would do something with an Easter theme since that’s what they liked the previous year. I baked a rectangular cake and drew a bunny on the cake, colored it, etc. and added grass and a border. It was pretty. I do have a picture of that, but I’m too lazy to scan it. Anyway, I didn’t even place that time.

Because I was blinded by my bitterness, I had no idea they had an actual rodeo during LIFE. When I saw that the list of events during this year's LIFE included mutton bustin’, I decided to set aside my ill feelings towards them and go. Dan’l was excited about it too because he wanted to sign up to ride some muttons. I told him it was too late to sign up, but he still wanted to go. Turns out, it was canceled because nobody donated muttons. We stayed anyway and got to see a pig race, a sad little animal show and Dan’l bungee bounced.

Yee haw!

Dan’l said he wants to sign up for the greased pig competition next year. Let’s hope that’s not canceled too.