For the (new!) Wild Horse and Heritage Days, Sheila encouraged Carson and Devon to enter the Poetry Contest (the divisions were larger than what it says on the website because they needed to have more kids in each group to compete, so Devon’s and Carson’s group were all elementary age children). We weren’t sure we would be able to do it, since the kids had to write their own poems and memorize them. 
We definitely did not have very long poems, but after spending about an hour explaining to them how poems are written, and how most cowboy poetry rhymes, and listening to a few Baxter Black poems on YouTube, they set out to write their poems on Wednesday night and try and memorize them through Cousin Camp to say in front of a crowd on Friday morning. 
I was nervous mostly for Devon because he’s so shy! I thought he might forget the words and clam up and maybe even cry if things didn’t go well. So I prepared him and told them both it was ok if they forgot the words and to just smile and do their best and have fun. It was actually pretty fun helping them prepare for it. They also were prepared to handle it well if by chance one of them won anything and the other didn’t. They planned to split the money if either of them won.
They did awesome! I was so proud of how well they both did. Carson forgot a line, but no one could tell. :) They were a bit nervous, understandably, since they’d never done anything like that before. Waiting for the judging. 
And guess what??? 
I love the picture above and the next picture! 
I also love seeing this when after all the winners were announced: 
It’s kind of funny how Carson is holding the money. 
There, that’s better :). 
And with Grandpa of course, since the poem was about him. 
Next Devon got to perform for the Chuck Wagon dinner that night. There were quite a few people there. The other division’s second place winner didn’t show up, so Carson got to say his. 
And Baxter Black was there since he was performing that night. He was waiting to meet the boys after they got off stage, so that was really awesome. He asked if they could open for his show, but the County had already arranged for the first place winners to open for him. We thought it was really nice of him to ask them to open for him, however! 
Great job, sweet boys of mine!