Our fun weekend

Well, I wanted to include some pictures in this post, but since our computer crashed.... Oh well.
On Friday night, we got to experience that rare wonder of all wonders: a night out without the kids! It was made even more wonderful due to the free babysitting service provided by my brother, Wes, and his fiance, Sharlyn (thank you, guys!) What did we do on this special occasion? We went out on a double date with our friends, the Smithsons. We live about 20 minutes apart, so we try to get together every 2-3 months for a double date (we see them quite regularly during the BYU football season). It was their turn to plan the date, and they chose dinner at Red Robin (excellent choice) and the movie Hancock afterward (also a very good choice). It was so fun to see them again, and so liberating to not worry about lugging around a baby carrier and diaper bag, or changing diapers, or telling Tayson to hold still and settle down.... I dearly love my children, but an occasional break is nice.
On Saturday, we headed down to Nephi (only Utah has town names of Nephi, Lehi, Moroni and Hyrum) for the annual rodeo, where we met up with Clint's whole family who also drove out for the occasion. We arrived down there shortly after lunch, just in time for the traditional Bathing Beauties Parade. Ah yes, the incredibly moving and patriotic parade in which pickup trucks drive slowly up main street with a young, nubile, bathing-suit-clad woman perched on top of the cabs, waving at the crowds lining the street. Who wouldn't want to miss such a spectacle? The parade finishes at a park, where the bathing beauties pose for a little beauty contest. The funniest part of the parade for me was that while everybody was sitting in lawn chairs in driveways or parking lots, there was this silly old man in his motorized wheelchair out in the middle of the street, not 2 feet away from the parading trucks, gawking and waving at each beauty, and turning his wheelchair to visually follow the procession of each truck until another one approached him. Crazy old lech.
After the parade, we returned to my sister-in-law's home to hang around for a couple hours. Clint and I took the opportunity of having so many babysitters around to sneak off for a joyride on my father-in-law's motorcycle. It was a dream machine. We have a fabulous motorcycle ourselves, but it proves to be challenging to find time to ride it together when you have two little muchkins around.
After our joyride, we left all the kids behind for another sister-in-law to watch (she and her husband went to the rodeo the evening before and didn't want to go again) and headed off to the rodeo. Imagine that... 2 nights in a row of kid-free entertainment! The rodeo started off as usual with a guy parachuting out of a plane with an enormous American flag hanging from his foot. He swooped across the sky for several minutes with the flag flowing behind him, then landed in the middle of the arena. There was several soldiers waiting to catch the flag before it landed on the ground, then they sretched the flag out briefly, before folding it up and letting the rodeo begin. There are several entertaining events in a rodeo, and several events that I don't care much for. But I do, however get a kick out of the bronco riding and the bull riding. There is something rather thrilling about watching a man trying to escape from being stomped or gored (a couple didn't escape so luckily). I have a great picture of the parachutist (is that a real word?) coming into the arena with the flag hanging behind him, but, again, that will have to wait until our computer gets fixed.
The sad part is that we now have to wait one whole year before the Bathing Beauty Parade comes through again.