Enchanted Springs

A few days after Christmas we went to Enchanted Springs Ranch, a cute little tourist-y spot a few miles outside of Boerne. It's a little cowboy type village, with gun shows and exotic animals and the like, and it's also a movie set. We dressed T up in her brand new cowboy boots (from Santa) for the occasion. (Also, here's where I tell you there are going to be A LOT of pictures in this post. What can I say, there were just too many cute little nieces and nephews there for me to narrow it down anymore than this.)

Nora was pretty excited!

The kids all played on this cute little playground while we waited for the puppet show to start.

Nora the cowgirl (with some help from Aine)

Locked up!

Declan was able to escape, though.

I love these horse tire swings. One day I'll have somewhere to hang one.

They had a cute little puppet show talking about the history of longhorns and cowboys and stuff in Texas, Nora thought it was pretty exciting.

So did the Smiths.

And poor T, she loved the puppet show, and the subsequent tractor ride to see all the animals, but the gun show was just absolutely awful for her. She hates loud knocking sounds, and I guess the blank gun shots also qualified. I took her out to walk around after she freaked out at the beginning of the show. I made the mistake of taking her back in for the bull whip demonstrations - turns out the crack of a whip is even louder than fake gun shots and she was off my lap and scrambling for the door faster than I'd ever seen her move before. Poor little thing, she was so upset by it, she asked to go back in to the little church, and then fell asleep in my arms - I guess she really was quite traumatized by it all.

She did wake up in time to sit on the real live longhorn they brought out.

Too bad they put him in such terrible lighting!