My Girl.....

My girl knows what she wants.  Just like her mama.  Wait, no, not like me at all.  I guess she must get that trait from her incredible daddy.  When she was in third grade and eligible to show livestock in 4H,  her dad and I asked her what animal she would like to show.  I mean, isn't it a shame to live on a farm and NOT show an animal in 4H?  At that time we had only one animal, well two.  We had my quarter horse Smokey who I bought in college and who I loved so much.  We also had our little miniature horse Shrinky Dink.  Shrinky wasn't much of a prospect, but I thought for sure my girl would say "ya mom, I want to be JUST LIKE YOU and love horses and I want to show horses."  I suppose I should mention that her dad actually showed horses, not just owned a horse like me.  He and his bruh showed western pleasure and did a pretty good job of it!  Me on the other hand, pretty much just rode around the section, a couple of trails and put on a gajillion pasture miles around and around.  Yeehaw

Well, our girl, being mature an all said...."let me think about it."  Grr....come on, you are 9, just pick something girl!  And a few days later she said she wanted to show pigs.  Um....pigs?  We literally knew nothing about pigs.

And so it began.......fast forward about six years or so and a friend introduced up to livestock judging.  She was on a team, had a great coach and loved it.  It literally took one conversation and my girl was hooked.  It was her thing.  And off we went.  Another new venture.  We joined a team, the same one our friend was on and we drove our girl an hour and half to practices aka workouts.  We took her to competitions, we hung out at farms while she was with her coach.  We researched, we talked, we followed her lead.  

Last winter our girl's team got third place in the Illinois State 4H Livestock Judging Contest.  The first place team gets to go on to compete at the American Royal in Kansas City.  The second place team goes on to compete at the National Western Livestock show in Denver Colorado.  Well, lucky for our team, the second place team had already been to Denver to complete for their one and only time, so the honor was passed to our team!!  Image the excitement!  We were headed to Denver!

In January of 2017 off they went to Denver to compete.  They, meaning not Mama and Daddy.  Just the team and their coaches.  Repeat not Mama and Daddy.  

Not US-Her. Alone without us.  This was another new experience for us.  Another example of our laser focused, sharp, confident and capable girl was off with her team to Denver for several days.  

Here they are....your 4th pace team. I'm going to post a link to the results here, not necessarily for you all (um, the 4 of you who actually read this) but for me, well us....to look back on and recall the excitement when our team did a very nice job representing Illinois!

Photo thanks to Sue!

You know what, our family maybe knows a little about horses.  I mean you could say horses are two or three generations deep around here.  But pigs, sheep and cattle.  Nope.  Our girl is figuring that out on her own.  And she is rocking it!  We are so proud.  Not of her performance (of course we are proud of that) but we are proud of her confidence, her poise, her drive, her determination and her passion.  She's a gem.