Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

One of the reasons we took the girls to Conroe for spring break was to visit the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. As far as I know, it is one of the biggest in Texas & last for several weeks with big headlining musicians. I grew up going to the rodeo & have always wanted to take the girls. To be honest, we technically didn't take them to the rodeo, we spent the day at the livestock show & fair:

Houston was not on spring break so it wasn't crowded & we had perfect weather. We went during the day & left late that afternoon as the crowds started rolling in. I would have loved for the girls to see the rodeo, but it didn't start until 7:00 that night. Instead, we had fun checking everything else out. We had lunch & then headed inside to see the livestock:

We found a steer named Sadie who just had a calf the day before. And right next door was a steer named Zoe:

The girls loved it! Too bad the real Zoe wasn't with us :)

We took the girls to the petting zoo, but Sadie wasn't a fan. Guess she's a city girl! Sophie stayed a little longer as long as Mimi was holding her:

Of course neither one of them was afraid of the rabbit:

or the ponies:

Ok, so maybe Sophie was a little scared at first, but then she did great!

They also learned about the life cycle of an egg & got to watch some baby chicks hatch. I thought that was pretty cool! We saw an ant farm, learned about bees & then they got to plant some sunflower seeds to take home:

Although I think we left them at Mimi & Doc's house in Conroe!

Eventually we went outside to the Midway because Sadie was dying to ride some rides! Mimi treated the girls to face painting:

We lucked out because since it was during the week & not spring break for HISD, there were no lines so the girls got to ride what ever they wanted:

Bryan & I even took turns riding with them:

I think it was the first time Bryan started to feel old. Sadie really wanted to ride the tilt a whirl & about half way through I thought Bryan was going to be sick:

Thank goodness he held it together but he had to sit & take a break for a while afterwards! Eventually he felt better & we couldn't help but visit the food tents one more time before we left. We had lunch earlier but I was determined to buy the fried dessert sampler so we could all sample fried oreos, nutter butters, nutella, twinkie & snickers:

What a fun way to end the day! Maybe next time we'll stay for the rodeo!