We went to the rodeo on Wednesday night, as a kick off to our fourth of July weekend. It was opening night, and the stands were, surprisingly, only about half full. Olivia was really into it though. It’s the first year she seemed to be even aware that something was going on. She talked about how the horsies would jump and jump and jump, and the cowboys would fall off. Cal was more interested in walking along the benches. One funny thing that happened though was one rider, who was riding a bronc, was RIGHT IN FRONT OF US as he went flying into the air (we had front row seats, center of the stadium), and as he was flying up into the air, he took his cowboy hat off and waved at us. It was pretty funny. I love the Oakley Rodeo.

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A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes
The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs’s story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.
— Willa CatherArtsy Fartsy



