labor day weekend fun, what fun!--part three

As if we had not had enough fun already in one weekend, we also had a church picnic. But Mike decided that a better name for this event is our church hick-nic. You'll see why in a minute. We had so much fun. Some wonderful people who go to our church and are dairy farmers hosted it and it was a blast. Like all good picnics there was good food and cool people. But unlike any picnic we had ever attended, there was also…

Mutton Busting.
Mutton busting is an event when we “see how long a child can ride a sheep.” Our church has a sweet little Jewel of a girl who received a trophy from this even at the fair; so several members decided it would be fun to try it out at the picnic. Ethan was so sure he wanted to do it that he dawned his hat. Another boy went first.

And it did not go well. The sheep ran straight for the fence, slammed our little friend into it and then rolled on top of him. He wasn’t hurt, but I don’t think he had fun. His brother decided to find out if it was a fluke.

It ended the exact same way. After watching this, Ethan climbed into our 18 year old friend's arms and while nervously rubbing his face exclaimed, “I don’t want to ride the sheep.” Aidan was far away playing pickle ball and Luke was adamant that he was not doing this. No one else did either (of course Mike asked each one if they were sure they didn’t want to give it a try!). We gave up on mutton busting and moved on to the calf rodeo.

This went a lot better. But I did notice that it was mostly the dairy farmer’s kids that were successful.

I dubbed one of our little friends the calf whisperer.

And I love this friend.

She is such a neat girl; she can even fall off a calf with grace.

At this point in the party, Ava was napping in our friend’s house and I was therefore a little freer to play. What was the next event? Well, shooting of course!
There were air soft guns, BB guns, shotguns, and Glocks. Many of us enjoyed trying our hand at shooting targets.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures but many in our family enjoyed this event. Aidan especially liked the air soft guns, shooting at balloons. Mike and I found the Glock to be fun to shoot. We

shot at bowling pins. And you know what? I am a pretty good shot!

It was a fun introduction to the concept of hic-nic; we all had a blast. But the real reason for this probably has more to do with how much we love the people of our church. Good times.