Monday, March 8, 2010

Texas Independence Day Parade

I am so proud of my little yellow horse. For the first time since my show days as a teenager, I was up at 5:30am to head to the barn. We hauled down to the Texas Department of Transportation parking lot, and got the horses ready there.

Please ignore my weirdly-shaped phone-in-pocket butt. Halo got red glitter hooves, blue stars on her butt, and I was just starting to braid red ribbons into her mane in this picture.



Here we are just before getting on to head to the start of the parade. I wish someone had told me my helmet was crooked!



Mounted up and ready to go! I like how we unintentionally ended up in height order.



As the parade began, they fired off this thing, which some of the horses weren't too thrilled about. Halo and I both jumped out of our skin when it first went off, but by the 8th or 9th blast, she didn't react at all. Fortunately it was several blocks away from us, and we never had to get close to it.



There were some neat costumes worn by people in the parade. Halo wasn't a big fan of one woman's ruffly parasol.





These mules were the cutest thing ever!



We had to ride right under this giant flag that was hoisted up on a crane. I'd say the flag was flapping about five or ten feet above the horses' heads.



This man rode the one horse guaranteed not to spook.



Mexican dancers



Not part of our group, but they had neat costumes, and very calm horses.



Yes, they are carrying sparkly toilet plungers. Don't ask.





We were not too far behind this lawn chair brigade. Who comes up with this stuff??



Here we come! Halo really wanted to keep her nose up the tail of the buckskin dun in front of her. Fortunately he was very amicable and didn't mind the baby trying to hide in his tail and eat his ribbons.





We've now arrived at the capitol building...





I'm so proud of my girl!



Me and the DW posting in front of the State Capitol. I've always wanted a picture of this!



Once we got her home and washed off, Halo reminded us of the real focus of her existence.



The next day I came out to find this.



I'm so lucky to have a horse that puts up with all the crazy stuff I do with her.

3 comments:

spazfilly said...

BTW, I apologize for the pics being cut off on the right...I tried to fix it, but I don't know enough about HTML to widen the post column without screwing up my sidebar. Sigh.

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

Wow! That is quite an accomplishment. I'm proud of both of you... a little jealous too.

spazfilly said...

I thought I was going to explode with pride for Halo. Now we just have to see if I have the balls to do the big 4th of July parade - it's much longer, and the crowds will be far more intense.