elle-m-n-o-p: mother/son rodeo 2014

Saturday, February 8, 2014

mother/son rodeo 2014

We had a mother/son rodeo at church last Friday (or our gang banquet as Katie called it). This was supposed to be last November, but I had to postpone because of dissertation. (If I had a dollar for everything that has been pushed off because of that thing! But I digress and it's almost over!) We got some great help setting up Friday morning from our friends Katie and Olivia, and this time got the set up done with enough time to not be rushed during Todd and I's date.

the set up gang

love this kid!

We went to Chickfila, mostly because I knew he would eat the food and it was close to the church. After eating our grub we headed up to the Mayfair ranch. We had several moms, and an aunt, and some grandmas join us with their cowboys. All the boys were close in age so it made it easier to do the activities and they got along really well. It was a really fun night!

My cute date!

This is the fourth parent/kid night and I by this time I figured out get the photos in early or it won't happen. Everyone just gets busy and it gets forgotten about. So as soon as the moms got there I got them to visit the photo booth. I have the parents write letters to their child during the event that usually goes with the theme or as a memoir of the night. While they're doing this they visit with someone who has an older child of the same gender for advice. I take the kids and make a special survey or gift for the parents. And then mail the photos, letters, and surveys after the event to the child for a keepsake.

Katie put together the great background for our photo booth. For the rodeo photo booth we had bandanas, hats, mustaches, beards, lips, sherif badges, and a wanted sign as props.

this kid is definitely wanted!

Our dessert for the evening was root beer and milk, a "happy trails" mix the families could make, and making pie pops together. I thought cooking would be a good activity for moms to do with their boys and pie is a western kind of dessert. I would say forget about the candy sticks next year, and just call them pie pockets because the sticks really didn't work very well. I think the boys had more fun just making them and didn't even care of eating them.