New Year's Day at the Rodeo

We've been taking every opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors over the Christmas holiday's and thankfully the weather has been cooperating pretty well. We were able to enjoy a great BBQ on the lawn with our mates last night for New Year's eve.  We did the countdown to 2009 at 9:30 - yes, we're old.  And have toddlers.  But, Kim and I did stay up 'til ~12:30 after all so I guess we still have a vestige of youth in us yet (Kim does).
This morning we drove north ~1.5 hrs (traffic was surprisingly horrific - see the last post for more details) to Warkworth (a 45min drive) for the New Year's Day Rodeo!  We all had a great time.  It seemed to be an authentic replica of Texicana if you ask me.  There was red, white and blue stuff, Texas Star stuff, Justin boots store stuff, Garth Brooks and George Straight music.  In fact, on the way to the rodeo we were trying to think of rodeo songs.  I thought of Rhinestone Cowboy by Glen Campbell, but I only knew one line from it.  Kim had a vague recollection of a Garth Brooks song about a rodeo but couldn't think of it.  Then, as we arrived to the rodeo that Garth song was playing.  It goes, 'it's boots and chaps and cowboy hats, it's spurs and a lot of gold...etc., and they call it a rodeo'.  I'd say there were about 1,100 people there.  I was a little surprised that it didn't seem to have it's own Kiwi flavor to it.  Or maybe some Aussie taint on it.  Maybe there's only so many ways to do a rodeo.  We did sing the NZ anthem, at least.  Here are the pictures:




There was also some iced cream.

And Claire's FIRST iced cream! 

Lastly, people aren't fat here because their iced cream is messed up.  It's kinda like Dairy Queen soft serve, which is good, but is it real iced cream?