Time Flys When You're Having Fun

Last Monday we celebrated our sweet baby boy's 4th birthday!! I can't hardly believe that its gone by this fast. We actually were in Waco, TX on his birthday for the Heartland Finals on the 15th but trust me, he didn't let it slip by anyone that it was his Birthday. He would walk up to a complete stranger and tell them "hey I'm 4 years old today" or he'd say "it's okay mom, I can do that now becuase I'm 4". I'm not real sure who he gets that from. Hunter and I also took him to Chuck-E-Cheese and we had a blast. That kid is the king of arcade games. After all the fun we had there, we took H to see Secertariet. It was pretty great too. After the movie we headed for the trailer to wait on Al and Sam who were coming from school to hang out for a bit and watch Hunter rope. It turned out to be a pretty good night becuase Hunter won the round and the announcers told everyone it was Houston's birthday during the rodeo!! H was eating the attention up!!!! Hunter roped again the next night and ended up winning second for the whole rodeo. As much as we would have liked to win first it was such a blessing to be there and win what we did. As most of you probably know by now Hunter didn't qualify for the National Finals this year and it's been a small struggle accepting that. It's getting better becuase you can't win eveything and when we look back at the whole year it just wasn't one of our best. But Hunter has been in the practice pen about everyday and they better look out in 2011 becuase were not missing out again!!

                                                                       Pinata time!!

H was pretty good! 

 After all the kids went the string that held it up busted so H just beat it until everything came out

 Cake time...H wanted a deer, bear, snake, and elk on his cake but all he got was an amazing 10 point buck which he pointed out to everyone!

 Make a wish

 Haha Aunt Heather's worst nightmare. She hates for the cake to be cut uneven. I'm not real sure why she takes on this job at Houston's birthday becuase of course he wanted the bucks head right out of the center. maybe we'll break her from her cake ocd

 Presents!!!!!

 In the back left is Walker and Toby, then Brooklyn, Bailey, H, Cooper, Cullen, Tucker and Tyler

 Birthday Boys!!! It was also my dad and Bob's birthday on Houston's party day (18)

Me and Hunter after the party

Other than enjoying home these last few weeks, not much has happened. Hunter roped at Kansas City this weekend and is winning first in the second round with a 7.5 but it won't officialy be over until next weekend. Then next weekend we will travel to Park City, Kansas for our Prarie Circut Finals. Hunter is currently in the lead in those standings and should win that since he's so far ahead of everyone. The year end winner and average winner from the circut qualify for the Dodge National Circut Finals that has re-located to OKC in March. That's exciting since it'll be so close to home!!

Pics from the last few weeks

                                                           Me and H man before Al's game

                                                                        Sam and Al

                                Al, H and Grandma after the game. H is givin them a nice squeeze

                                                           Sam doing what she does!!!

                                     Al has moved from second to third base. She's pretty salty...
                                       what can i say though, she learned from the best haha.

                                 Wish I could have waited a few more seconds before I took this.
                                     Al caught the ball and the girl slid in and she tagged her out.

Houston's Pro Rodeo Debut

For the short round at Ellensburg, Keith isley asked Houston to be in his clown act. He was pretty excited but we were a little nervous he'd back out since there were so many people but the stage performer came out in him and he was the star. I put the pics on in backwards order so the end of the clown act is first.



Houston got the best of Keith and he gave the
pony up!


Talking things over



Houston got the short end of the stick. Jerome
bought the saddle and Keith turned to lead the
horse out


Houston, Jerome and Keith

Houston and Jerome went out to buy the horse

and saddle

Keith and his pony

The Start of the clown act with Keith Isley!

It's almost impossible to get all 4 to stand still

to take a pic. These are 4 Very Wild Kids!!!

Jarett, Jace and Jaden Schneeburger with

Houston

a few pics from along the way

When it rains, I'm pretty sure it pours

Well I'm back in action on here...I've been enjoying not even knowing what day it is lately but I figure there's a few people getting antsy for me to make another post :)
After we got home from Cheyenne we enjoyed a few days just relaxing at home, but Hunter was off again to Kansas for the whole week. He did really well throughtout the week and got a little boost in the standings. Houston and I drove down to the Spicer Gripp roping to watch Hunter on Saturday. We were planning on staying the night and watching Hunter in the short-go but he didn't fare so well on 2 of his 3 calves. Hunter rode home with us and got to stay home for a day and then was off to Sikeston, Mo, Lovington, NM, Coffeeville, KS and then back to Lawton. He won some money at all three except for Lovington and had another good week. Originally the plan was for Deacon to haul the rig and horse back up to Caldwell, Idaho as I was going to stay home and help Coach Base coach the high school softball team. I was really excited to get back into the game. The job required me to get my bus driving license so I went down to the Highway patrol office in Lawton to pick up a study guide. When it was my turn I was helped by a little old man. I told him what I was there for and he looked at me funny and said "sweetie you don't look very old, are you sure you wan't to take all those lives into your hands?" I replied "yes sir, I suppose." He then said "well do you know how big a bus is, they are fairly large." I said "yes sir, I've drove a decent size rig before." He said "well....I don't think driving a pick-up truck is quite the same." I kind of laughed and told him my rig was "fairly" bigger than just a pick-up truck, but thank you for the concern. Guess he didn't see me as the driving-all-over-the-country-pulling-a-32 foot-trailer type of girl. Anyway come to find out the softball job required another class that I didn't really want to take so I ended up not having to learn how to drive such a huge vehicle after all. After I decided that I was back on to take the horse and rig to Caldwell instead of Deacon. Houston, my Grammy and I loaded up and headed west. The first day we got a late start, after I drove all over the state trying to find someone that had front tires for a dodge truck. I guess they're quite hard to come by. We were making pretty good time, considering we stopped about 8 times. The plan was to try and make it at least halfway across Wyoming but about 1 a.m. I couldn't make it any further. I was plum worn out. I decided Cheyenne would be a good place to stop for the night. We could stay right there at the arena. We pulled in and I told gram she could go ahead and get in bed while I put the horse up and got him watered. I got Spiderman put in a stall and was getting some buckets and stuff out and could hear him making quite a bit of noise. I stood back and watched him for a minute or two and almost instantly panicked. He kept trying to lay down and so I knew he was trying to colic on me. I'm still a little traumatized after almost losing Cajun last year at Omaha due to Colic. I immediantly got him out and started walking him around and tried 180 times to get ahold of Hunter. I just knew he had fallen asleep and I was ready to kill him if the horse didn't die first. Of course the whole park was completely empty so I was pretty alone. I went down my contact list and tried every cowboy I knew that was in the same place as Hunter. No One answered!! Finally Hunter called me back and was wondering why I felt the need to call him so many times when I knew he was roping. They were in the middle of slack at Caldwell and I didn't know or care that he was roping when I was in such a mess. I told him the problem and he was all calm like I'd been in the position a million times and was a colic pro. He told me I needed to get a shot ready, which I already knew I needed to do but was dreading it. On top of the shot I had to hit him in the vein in his neck so the meds would work faster. **Note..I've asked Hunter a million times to teach me how to give a shot in the vein so just in case I was ever in the situation alone and this happened I would be prepared. And what does he always tell me..."oh you'll never be in that situation so don't worry about it." RIGHT!! I sat the phone down because Hunter was making me nervous and then proceeded to stick our horse about 5 times and miss the vein everytime. Well I may have knicked it once because he was bleeding all over the place. Now I'm just frazzled. I get Hunter back on the line and tell him I can't find it. So he tells me to just shoot the medicine in his neck. This scares me even more than the vein because there are some meds that will eat the muscle so you cannot miss. Hunter assured me this medicine wouldn't eat his muscle out just to shoot it in. So I did it...I just shot the medicine into his poor neck that already has 5 puncture wounds. It bubbled up where the medicine was and just sat there. Great the medicine was now just hanging out right under the skin. While all this is happening some people overhear Hunter talking to me and know some friends in Cheyenne that might be able to help me. They get them on the phone and get a vet called. After about 45 minutes the vet finally arrives and checks him out. He was definitly trying to colic but wasn't that bad yet. The vet gave him a better shot that actually made it to his vein. After the vet told me he thought I caught him early and that he thought everything was going to be okay I put Spider back in his stall and got in bed about 4 am. Later that morning a man knocks on the door about 7:15, oblivious to all that just took place and demanded I give him 15 dollars for the stall. He said I didn't have permission to be in the park and I should have asked when I arrived. I really felt like giving this man the full wrath but decided I'd be better off to just chunk the cash at him. After the rude awakening I figured I might as well get up and head out or I'd want to sleep all day. I was so exhausted but kept trucking because I was definitly not giving anymore shots the rest of the day. I'm pretty sure the GPS lied to me somewhere along the line, because before we left it said it was only 1400 miles, but as it turned out it was actually 1650 miles. 14 hours later we finally made it to Caldwell. I turned the reins over to Hunter and was ready to hit the sack. What a rough day, but we made it. And it maybe wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, but close!!
We hung out with Gram the next day but then it was time for her to fly back home. I was sure thankful she came with me, and I guess I really broke her in on her first time on the road haha. Since then we've been all over the northwest. We've been to waterparks, drove by the ocean, almost lost a wheel and transmission coming down the mountain and are now just camped out. Im hoping our luck turns around this week. Hunter is in Oklahoma trying to wrap the circut rodeos up and then fly back out here Saturday!! It's crunch time!!!

Schedule

August
28- lynden, Washington slack a.m.
28- cour' d Alene, Washington slack pm
29- San Juan Capistrano, California
30- pueblo, Colorado
31-
September
1-
2- elk city, ok slack 1 p.m. Ryan is also up in barrels
3- Hastings, Nebraska 4 pm
4-
5- ellensburg, Washington
6-
7-
8- Lewiston, Idaho
9-
10- hopefully hunter qualifies for tour finale in puyallup Washington but if not were at Spokane Washington
11-
12-
13-
14- Pendleton, Oregon
15-
16-
17-
18- hopefully short round at Pendleton
19-
20- Albuquerque, new Mexico
24-26 Omaha, Nebraska hopefully hunter qualifies for this. Last tour finale

Trouble Trouble Trouble

Well here we are almost done with the summer run. It feels like it has flown by. It’s been quite interesting; I swear trouble can find us anywhere. The other night in Calgary we had just got through at a birthday party for Stran Smith and were headed back to the arena. As we stopped at the gate to show them our passes we could smell this awful smell and it was instant headache. We were like hmmm wonder what that is, smells a little like burning oil. Then we saw that there was smoke coming from under our hood and funneling right into our air conditioning and through the windows. GREAT!! Didn’t we just get this truck out of the shop the other day? We popped the hood and could see where everything was coming from. We called a dealership right there and they said they usually don’t fix trucks on a Saturday but to bring it in and they would do it for us. So the day of the wildcard round Hunter was running around crazy trying to get everything in order before the perf started. Hunter missed so that ended Calgary for us this year, but the good news was our truck was done and ready for pickup. We had some friends drop us off on their way out and the dodge guys tell us “oh by the way we didn’t fix your truck because there were 4 seals broken instead of just 1, but it’s drivable”….If you can handle carbon monoxide swirling around your face every time you stop at a red-light. So off we go headed back down to the good ole USA!! We drove about 5 hours to Great Falls, MT to stay the night. When we got there we were trying to find a level place to park and managed to bust our back window out because the truck turned to sharp. We cleaned up most of the glass but decided we could do the rest in the morning. The next day Hunter got up and went to find cardboard, duck tape and some stuff to put under the hood to help with the emissions. We taped the window up nice and tight and went to work on the seals. Hunter un-screwed a cap and all of a sudden fluid started spraying out. This caused him to drop the cap somewhere in the hood, and it’s impossible to drive without it. Another GREAT!! We looked everywhere for that dumb cap but it must have disappeared into thin air. Deacon decided to hop the fence and book it over to the ace hardware store to try and find a replacement. Finally after about 3 hours we had a new cap in place and got back on the road. What a way to start the day huh. We drove all day and stopped to eat in Burley, Idaho. There on the side of the road is where we found the newest member of our family. Hunter spotted a man holding a rather colorful sign that said dogs for sale. We drove over and found out that they had 9 baby pit bulls for sale. I guess a light bulb went off in Hunter’s head that he needed a new pig hunting dog. Now we have 3 dogs and a goat…just what we needed!! Hunter decided we would name him Burley, since that’s where we bought him. For some reason though, Houston cannot remember Burley so he started calling him Hurley and that stuck. For the most part that’s his name but if you ask Houston he may tell you that it’s Carlos, “because he kind of looks like a Carlos!” We finally got on the road again and were about 3 hours from our destination, Nampa, Idaho. It took us quite a bit longer than 3 hours though. First, we had another blowout. This time it rolled up our fender and pulled some of the trailer wires down a bit. We got that changed and the lights tied in a safe spot and were back on the road. As it started to get dark we noticed that our trailer light weren’t working so we pulled over again and got out to fix that. Hunter and Deacon figured out the problem and we were off again. This time we only made it about 100 feet before we noticed our speedometer and odometer wasn’t working. Then the brake and check engine light came on. GREAT GREAT GREAT. Once again we pull over and pop the hood. Hunter figured out that we blew a fuse. They tinkered with it for awhile but we decided we’d just drive on without that stuff. We have a Garmin and it shows the speed so weren’t driving completely blind. Finally we made it to Nampa and got everything put up and hit the sack. The next day the truck went back into the shop and Hunter roped in slack and was 11.2 on his first calf and 7.6 on second. He’s winning third in the second round right now, but it’s not over for a few more days. The next day was Salt Lake City and Hunter was 8.2 and then a No Time. We were at Spanish Fork yesterday and it didn’t go very well either. Tonight we are up at Ogden and then were off to Cheyenne. Cross your fingers that our rig makes it across there.