Cowboy Casey Jones

Today was the "Cowboy Breakfast" at Brakenridge Apartments. Every now and again the Austin aristocracy apparently likes to amuse itself by watching the peasants at play of a Saturday morning. So we get a pancake breakfast, complete with raffle drawings, pony rides, country gospel music, and a Best Dressed Cowboy and Cowgirl Competition (with fabulous prizes). Since we've all been under the weather, Ruthie didn't have a chance to put a great costume together for Jackson, but she was still just about to make him a pair of chaps out of brown paper bags when I stopped her. We both knew that he didn't really have a shot at the prize, given that he didn't even have a cowboy hat, and brown paper chaps where going to take an hour to make and 30 seconds to rip off. So we did the best we could, which as you can see above, was not much. In lieu of a cowboy hat, Jackson opted for a train conductor's cap. I asked him if he wanted to wear my field hat, which, though not a cowboy hat, was a lot closer. He said no, he'd just pretend that the cap was a cowboy hat. (So now we're not dressing up to pretend that we're cowboys; we're pretending to dress up as cowboys.) He didn't even have a clean pair of blue jeans, so he had to wear shorts with his cowboy boots! At any rate, we had a fun time shuffling around as semi-invalids, and to our amazement, JRW won the Best Dressed Cowboy Competition! There were kids there in leather chaps, cowboy hats, boots, six shooters, vests, etc. We're not exactly sure how he won, but it's amazing how you get this sense of pride and satisfaction over these little triumphs. My boy was Best Dressed Cowboy! And another cause for some satisfaction: The general consensus was that it must have been the stick horse that put him over the top (aside from being very cute, that was all he had going for him). Guess who got him that stick horse for his birthday a couple of months ago? So our birthday present won him this additional fabulous prize--a Hot Wheels Stunt Car set! Wow, what a great day.