Off to the Races

Well, yet another week has gone by and still no Reagan.  This little girl is bound and determined to remind us that she operates on her own schedule.  While our obvious preference would have been to spend Memorial Day weekend in a labor and delivery recovery room, we ended up making the best of the situation by going to the local horse race track.

Not that I think there are any horse racing aficionados that read our blog and would make an assumption about what race we went to, but I’m not referring to the Preakness horse races (one of the races in the Triple Crown – a pretty big deal, apparently, in horse racing).  No, I’m just referring to a local track called the Fair Hill Racetrack.  It was really fun to go and see our very first horse race.  I remember going to the rodeo as a kid over the 24th of July and wanting to be a cowboy.  I wonder if Tyler will grow up and want to be a jockey?   If so, he better take after Thesha’s side of the family or he’s going to be one pudgy jockey.  (Yes, pudgy – not fat.  I’m still holding on to pudgy.)

Here are some pictures and stories from our Fair Hill adventure.

Tyler took his first pony ride.  He was a little nervous at first, but once the pony started moving he just held on to the saddle and rode like a pro.  We didn’t really know if he was having fun because he kept a very serious face the whole time.  Once he got off and was back on the ground, however, he was laughing and smiling so we assume he enjoyed himself. 

The people who provided the pony rides have a children’s horse/pony riding camp each summer.  When the cousins get a little older we’ll have to have a pony party when you all come out to visit (hint, hint).

In addition to the horse races, they had Jack Russell Terrier (dog) races as well.  They would stick 4 – 6 dogs in a starting gate and get them riled up with a rag tied to the end of a string then let them go as they pulled the string down the course.

Man, these little guys can really fly.  It was a good thing we brought our good camera to take some quick pictures.

After a couple sprint races, they moved the jumps in to place.  I thought it was impressive that they could run so fast and jump over the pipes, but then one jumped all the way over one of the little fences.  Not only are they fast, but those little suckers can jump too.

At the end of the track they have to put a couple bails of hay.  When they did this it seemed a little strange to us.  It only took one race to realize why they were there.  As you can see from the picture below, the bails of hay are the only things that stopped the dogs.  Here you can see about 4 of them all bunched up in the hay after racing after the rag.  The trainers had to wrestle them out because they were still doing every thing they could to get that rag.

Once all the big dogs (well, relatively big dogs) were done, they took one round for some puppy training.  It took a while for the little guy to figure things out, but he eventually picked it up.  You know this guy was just brining out the cute puppy to try and pick up some chicks – yeah, I’m on to you dork wad. :)

In addition to the races, they had a couple displays and stuff.  Here Tyler takes a seat in a new tractor.  I’ll give you three seconds to find Reagan…Three… Two… oh, you already see her.  Yeah, she was kind of hard to miss that day.

Tyler loved this thing.  He has a little puzzle with some farm animals and a tractor.  When he puts the tractor piece in the puzzle he makes the “brumm, brumm” sound.  When we sat him up there and starting making the sound he figured out that he was on the machine from his puzzle and started “brumm, brumm-ing” with us and turning the wheel and laughing.  Something tells me I’m going to have to keep an eye on the car keys a little sooner than I anticipated.

Although Tyler was a little young for this next event, I couldn’t help but take a few pictures.  They had a stand where the kids could pick out a stick with a blank horse head and then use stuff (glitter, construction paper, etc.) to personalize the horses face.  Once they had their stick horses ready to go, they had stick horse races for each age group.  You can imagine how fun this was to watch and I can’t wait until Tyler’s old enough to do this.  I especially liked this picture because if you look just to the right of the goofy guy in the orange shirt and sombrero you’ll see that one poor little girl has fallen down and another girl is running over the top of her to try and win the race.  Classic.  Like her Daddy taught her, if you’re not runnin’ over someone, you’re not racing.  Click on the picture to see a bigger version of the picture.

It was pretty hot and Tyler was still a little young to enjoy it, but we stuck around to watch at least one of the races.   You can see from all the people that this was a pretty popular place to be.  Here are the horses coming down the final stretch.

It looked like one horse was going to win without a fight, but towards the end another one at least made for a good show.  Here they are sprinting towards the finish. 

Needless to say, it wasn’t quite the same as the rodeo, but we all got to have some fun and Tyler got to be around a bunch of horses with his Grandma – an experience that I’m sure is just the first of many.  While we were waiting for the terrier races, one of the horse handlers was walking one of the races horses back to the stables and stopped to let Tyler get a close look and pet its nose.  He didn’t even flinch, so he definitely has what it takes to be around the horses. 

Lastly, in case you didn’t figure it out, Reagan still hasn’t made her debut.  We’ve done everything except throw Thesha up on the back of that freakin’ pony and nothing seems to be enough to induce labor.  All in good time, I suppose.