March Madness is in Town

Contrary to popular opinion (okay, I don’t really know if it’s popular, but at least I’ve heard it said), Houston is not full of cowboys and tumbleweeds. Maybe another part of Texas is—I’ve not been to Dallas yet :-) —but not Houston. In fact, let me debunk this myth right now. Houston is quite the “mecca” of different nationalities. My neighbors are Black, White, Asian, Jewish, Hispanic, and Indian, and I don’t see them walking around in cowboy hats and boots. As for the tumbleweeds, they usually imply wide, open spaces, and much to Josh’s chagrin, that is certainly not the case. We’ve got a grocery store across the street and a donut shop and restaurant in our backyard (thanks to the lack of zoning laws we have here). We are all CITY. Those of you who have been here to visit can probably testify to that truth.

However, that being said, we do let a little cowboy spirit into our city once a year at this time. It happens to coincide in part with March Madness every year. While the nation was soaking up NCAA basketball tonight, we went to Houston’s own March Madness—the Rodeo. That’s right, the R-O-D-E-O. Who needs hoops when you’ve got cows? Right, Dad :-)? Though BYU played, Josh showed his true colors and chose the better part (J/K :-) I couldn’t resist). Actually, BYU played before we went to the Rodeo. Tough loss! It’s not all bad news for Josh, though. He actually chose our Texas Aggies in his bracket, and I was the one that chose BYU in mine. Let’s hope we both chose correctly for Utah’s game tomorrow. As for Utah State’s game, sorry Dad, we both chose Marquette, but at least we’re hoping we’re wrong on that one.

Anyway, I digress. Honestly, Josh and I are not big fans of bull riding and cattle roping, but we decided we’d finally go to the livestock show, which was pretty interesting. Josh actually commented that we need to do it again next year. The livestock show is simply a showcasing of animals such as rabbits, chickens, cows, pigs, goats, etc. that FFA members have raised. There’s nothing fancy about it, but at least it’s not bull riding and cattle roping. There are also carnival rides, though we didn’t go on any, and tons of deep fried food on a stick. Basically, it’s like a fair, only bigger and more elaborate. We didn’t try the deep fried Oreos or Snickers that many here have raved about, and we didn’t even have a funnel cake, but we did have some barbeque. I guess we had our deep fried foods a couple of weeks ago.

Let me digress again and explain. The restaurant that I mentioned we have in our backyard specializes in deep frying pretty much everything. We decided to try it a couple of weeks ago. My dad tried their fish and chips last year when he came. Though we’ve heard they’re good, we decided to get burgers, which were very tasty. Then we tried their fried vegetable platter. It’s probably not the best way to eat vegetables, but they too were tasty. In addition to fried zucchini, which we had eaten before, they had fried broccoli, fried mushrooms, and even fried avocados. Of course, our favorite were the fried sweet potatoes. Yum! Anyway, it seems easier to stomach a bunch of fried vegetables than a dozen fried Oreo cookies, though I’m sure they are pretty tasty in their own right. Perhaps if I ate chocolate it would be a temptation. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t. Well, enough of digressing. Here are the pictures from the Rodeo.

This is for you, Dad. Sorry, we were too late for the actual demonstration, but you don't need one!

I have never seen so many rabbits in my life and didn't even know so many different kinds existed!

Eli seemed to like the petting zoo!

I don't know if the H stands for "Howdy" or "Houston" but it's the Rodeo mascot.

This is unrelated to the Rodeo, but I have to share. Eli is now standing on his own--not just for a few seconds but for quite a while! I promise there are no invisible strings attached in the pictures below ;-).

The Houston Zoo

This is almost a week late, but we finally took Eli to the Houston Zoo last week during Josh's spring break. We've been wanting to go but have been waiting until Eli seemed a little more interested in animals. He still wasn't very interested in many of them, and he fell asleep for part of it, but he was curious to see some of them, especially those that made noises and the orangutans. They were being silly and playing around, so they were most human-like for him, which is probably why he liked them so much. Truly, had there been people in a cage, he would have watched for hours. He's definitely a people watcher. Anyway, we have a zoo membership so we can go often (it's really close to where we live too), and I'm sure he'll enjoy the animals more the older he gets. Here are some of the pictures we took while we were there: