My Fair Niblets (the 2013 Horse-Scented Edition)

I love it when my niblets come to visit my cute little cowtown each year for fair.

Last year's fair trip. August 2012

This year, my sweet friends Val and Bill helped make the trip extra special by arranging for the niblets to do some horseback riding, and that quickly became the focus of the whole trip.

I brought Bentley, Maxwell, and Jonah up to Cowtown Thursday afternoon.
Bentley helped cook dinner, but what he really wanted to do was ride a horse.

The boys chose a perfect storm of junk foods for dinner, which they got to eat in the living room (gasp!) while watching a movie (double gasp!), but they really just wanted to skip right to the horses.

A Doctor Who party and late night run to DQ in our jim-jams for more junk food distracted them for a while...

... But even the adventures of a time-traveling alien with two hearts couldn't keep their minds from wandering into equestrian territory.

They got to play with my sonic screwdriver and wear funny hats, but they were counting down to horse time.

Grandma and Pa brought Ruby and Milo up from Utah on Friday morning and the official fair festivities began. The niblets ate fair food (and asked about horses) ...

...played in bouncy houses (and talked about horses) ...

...went swimming and hot-tubbing (and anticipated meeting horses) ...

...and played with cousins (while discussing good names for horses) .

We spent the evening at the rodeo, surrounded by cowboys and bulls and uncles and aunts and cotton candy and maple bars.

Where the boys spent time admiring very talented horses (and cheering for the bulls.)

And they even got to do a little shooting (thanks again Val and Spencer!) which, on any other fair trip would have been the boy's idea of heaven.

But not on this trip.
On this trip, heaven was on horseback.

They loved every horse-scented moment in the saddle.

I mean, they REALLY loved it.

They sure are lucky niblets to have an Aunt with such awesome, horse-finding friends. 

But now that aunt has a problem...

How exactly am I supposed to top this?

Thank goodness I have a year to figure that out.