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  Praise for

  My First Rodeo

  “What a tremendous collection of thoughts, lessons learned, and heartwarming stories about life and parenthood! Parents, grandparents, and even adolescent kiddos will find something in My First Rodeo just for them. For fathers in particular, Stoney brings a clever perspective on the trials, tribulations, and comedies of learning to be a modern-day dad. From life-changing stories that will water the eyes to laugh-out-loud adventures that will bring even more tears, Stoney’s first book is a great read!”

  —T. M. “ROE” PATTERSON, author of the book Crude Blessings and president and CEO of Basic Energy Services Inc.

  “From pineapple ‘I love yous’ to a map to heaven, My First Rodeo is a relatable book for dads or any parents doing their best in today’s complexity. A father of five myself, I place my title of Dad as my most sacred calling. Stoney gives insight into dad-hood in the best way possible: from the heart. Fatherhood is not biology; it is not words. It is actions. Three cheers for dads, and thank you, Stoney, for sharing your story!”

  —SHANE D. PLUMMER, international horseman and an all-time leading breeder

  “Stoney Stamper not only makes me wish I’d grown up on a farm; he makes me want to grab each and every person in my family and give them a great big hug. With colorful stories that include finding love, raising stepdaughters, and saving chickens, each chapter will leave you with either a smile on your face or a tear in your eye. And I challenge you to finish the entire book without breaking into a full-on sob!”

  —KELLIE RASBERRY EVANS, co-host of the Kidd Kraddick Morning Show and co-host of A Sandwich and Some Lovin’ podcast

  “Stoney Stamper takes you on his journey from old-fashioned cowboy to modern family man in this heartfelt look at fatherhood, love, and life off the beaten path.”

  —ALLY CARTER, New York Times best-selling author

  “For any movie or television show you’ve ever loved, you probably loved it because the creators made you feel a personal connection to the characters. Stoney Stamper tapped into the same vein for this book. You will love it because he makes it personal and lets you into his family. You’ll want to come back and visit.”

  —JIMMIE TRAMEL, author and Tulsa World pop-culture writer

  “Fun, honest, and necessary. There aren’t many options for fathers and men out there sharing truth and keeping it real. Stoney manages to offer that in an engaging and hilarious way. We may have the new Rick Bragg with decidedly less grump.”

  —KALAN CHAPMAN LLOYD, award-winning author and attorney

  “Stoney has a way with words like no other. Having four kids myself, two of whom are daughters, I found myself relating to many of his stories and at times actually pulling for him, as I have lived some of these same events. Through changing diapers, changing hormones, and everything that comes with being a father to beautiful daughters, I am a fan. Stoney is to words as Robert Earl Keen is to music.”

  —JOSH WEST, majority leader for the Oklahoma House of Representatives

  “As a happily married father of three who often feels light years away from the life I imagined and the one I have (in the best imaginable way), I’ve found a companion in Stoney Stamper and his bittersweet book My First Rodeo. Stoney took me on a reflective journey filled with tangibly relatable anecdotes and markedly honest commentary—one where I found myself fully immersed in a parallel cathartic experience. Stoney’s honest tone, subtle humor, and ability to capture the fragility of time and the power of love made this a refreshing and memorable read.”

  —DANIEL PATTERSON, author of The Assertive Parent

  “My First Rodeo is a captivating story of one man’s adventure in all things family. The author takes his audience by the hand, one page at a time, and reminds us that what we think we don’t want just might be the best thing that could ever happen to us. Few authors…few men, even, are so transparent and honest with the struggles, elations, fears, joys, and even challenges that encompass the journey of parenthood. Funny and emotional, My First Rodeo is a must-read. A story of love, maybe even of destiny, Stamper’s endearing tale will leave you wanting more and will evoke a deep need to find your own way back home.”

  —VERONICA HIX, executive director of ONABEN

  “This book builds the bridge between feeling normal and parenthood. Hilarious and relatable, Stoney captivates your attention as he walks you through the beauty and hardships of being the father of a blended family.”

  —CATRINA HERMENET, blogger and creator of @mommystruth

  MY FIRST RODEO

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Hardcover ISBN 9780735291652

  Ebook ISBN 9780735291669

  Copyright © 2019 by Stoney Stamper

  Cover design by Kristopher K. Orr; barn cover photo by Frank Staub, Getty Images; author cover photo and interior photos by April Stamper, 13:13 Photography

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  WATERBROOK® and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Names: Stamper, Stoney, author.

  Title: My first rodeo : how three daughters, one wife, and a herd of others are making me a better dad / Stoney Stamper.

  Description: First Edition. | Colorado Springs : WaterBrook, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018041312| ISBN 9780735291652 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735291669 (electronic)

  Subjects: LCSH: Fatherhood—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Fathers—Religious life. | Christian men—United States.

  Classification: LCC BV4529.17 .S73 2019 | DDC 248.8/421—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018041312

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  To April, not a single word of this book would have been possible without you. My real life started the day our paths crossed again. You are the June to my Johnny, and I love you more than you can know.

  To my daughters—Abby, Emma, and Gracee—thank you for giving me the only job that has ever really mattered in my life. Being a dad. Pineapple.

  Contents

  Foreword by Catherine Frederick

  Introduction

  The Story of Us

  Over the Hill

  Safe in His Hands

  Siblings

  My Twisted Road to Fatherhood

  A House Is Not a Home

  Life in a Small Town

  When Mama’s Gone

  The Only Certainty

  I Fought the Mall, and the Mall…

  The Art of Stepparenting

  Buckle Up, Dad

  Go Down Swingin’

  Bird’s-Eye View

  The Map to Heaven

  All I Want for Christmas

  The Man with All the Answers

  The Dirtiest Job of All

  Waitin’ On a Woman

  People Germs

  Dad Talk

  Don’t Tease the Llamas

  Just Let It Happen

  Pineapple

  Silence Is Golden

  Don’t Blink

  Dressing Girls Is Hard />
  Never Let You Down

  We Bought a Farm

  This Too Shall Pass

  Chicken Farming 101

  Beautiful Chaos

  Flew the Coop

  A Predator in the Night

  Doc

  You’re a Doll

  Back in My Day

  Murphy Church of God

  Granny’s Letter

  The Old Man and Strawberry Jelly

  Forever and Ever, Amen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  It was 2013 and I was scrolling through social media when I came upon an image of this beautiful Australian shepherd, which pulled me in. Then I started reading the words beneath the photo. Beautiful words. Funny words. Raw words. It was a heartfelt telling of a man losing his best furry friend, written by a man I didn’t know: Stoney Stamper. I finished reading. I dried my eyes. I kept scrolling.

  The next day, I probably shared his story with at least ten people. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s the thing about good storytelling; it leaps off the page and into your mind and makes its home there. I started digging. I had to figure out who this Stoney Stamper guy was. It didn’t take long to find him and his regular musings at his blog, The Daddy Diaries. I read every post. I laughed. Hard. I cried. Big tears. I knew I had to reach out and get this guy to write for my magazine, Do South. I had built the magazine on great storytelling and had a group of stellar writers. What I didn’t have was someone writing with so much humor.

  I contacted Stoney, and our friendship was born. Each month he’d let my readers into the life of his family. I got a front-row seat as his children grew older and as his wife’s photography business blossomed. I was lucky.

  And now you are too.

  You may be drawn to this book because you have a blended family. There’s nothing quite like marrying someone with children. In an instant you take on new responsibilities and do your best to be an instant parent.

  If this has happened to you, you know it can be like running an obstacle course blindfolded. It can also stretch you in ways you didn’t know were possible. Your heart opens. You find yourself suddenly singing kids’ songs in the shower. You learn to love mac and cheese, and chicken nuggets. And all of a sudden you realize that while you’re not the coolest kid on the block anymore, you are so happy!

  Even if your background is different from Stoney’s, you’ll love going along for the ride as he finds his footing as a husband and father. Stoney’s stories are epically funny, but they’re also tender reflections on love and parenting.

  I still remember the joy I felt when I discovered Stoney’s writing and asked him to be a part of Do South Magazine. I’m good at scouting out talent, and I knew his words would resonate with my audience. It may be because his stories feel timeless and a bit untamed. Like a cowboy. One who has finally found the perfect place to hang his hat.

  —CATHERINE FREDERICK,

  owner and editor-in-chief of Do South Magazine

  Introduction

  One sunny day more than five years ago, I sat down with my then six-week-old daughter, Gracee June. I was a man in my midthirties who had sworn time and again that I’d never be a father. I’d tell anyone who would listen. While nearly all my similarly aged friends and family had already started families, and several of them had children in their teens, I was only just beginning mine. Gracee was my first, and only, biological child. A few years prior to this sunny day, I had married my childhood sweetheart, and she had two daughters, Abby and Emma. Those two little girls had spent the last two years giving me daily lessons on how to be a father, and I was learning, albeit slowly. A baptism by fire, of sorts. I had no idea what I was doing, but I tried hard. Gracee—she was my first baby. I was thirty-three years old and had never changed a diaper. Never given a baby a bath. Never fed or burped a tiny little body over my shoulder.

  On that fateful day, my wife, April, had decided to use her Mother’s Day gift from me and the girls: a spa day complete with a deep-tissue massage, facial, manicure, and pedicure. A day of relaxation that she certainly deserved. When she left that day, we had no idea it would put into motion something beyond our wildest dreams. It was the first time I had ever spent the day alone with our precious little girl. I was blindly confident that the day would go smoothly. I am a competent person, after all. This couldn’t be that hard, right? As it would turn out, it was harder than expected. And everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And just like Abby and Emma had done, Gracee, in a mere matter of moments, shattered any illusions that I knew what I was doing. But I’m an optimist, and I believed something good was going to come from that day, shattered illusions and all.

  That evening I decided to take my sense of humor and knack for storytelling to pen and paper. I told the story of all of the craziness that had occurred that first day alone as daddy and daughter. I posted our story that night to my personal Facebook page, sort of hoping to get a few laughs. The story was shared over one thousand times in the first day. Our funny little story brought more laughs than anticipated, and it continued to make the rounds on social media for a few more weeks. Now, I had been a writer, in my own mind, for most of my life. I kept journals and wrote poems and short stories. But nothing anyone had ever really read, besides myself. April began encouraging me to start a Facebook page for my writing, maybe even a parenting blog. I confess that writing was a good release for me. I enjoyed it. And it was free, wouldn’t cost us anything except maybe a little bit of ego, if it didn’t take off.

  I told April that I would try it but only continue to do it if I could get at least one thousand followers. I thought this was a lofty goal. Well, much to my surprise, I had more than one thousand followers in the first day. Next thing I knew, I had five thousand. And then ten thousand. We had officially gone viral. Today my blog—The Daddy Diaries—reaches more than one hundred thousand people every day. April and I still sit around sort of shocked. Who could have ever seen that coming?! Well, not us, that’s for sure. The Daddy Diaries has evolved into its own community, even being a place where people come to help others. In the last five years, we have raised more than sixty thousand dollars for families and children in need. We have been fortunate enough to help more than fifty families in times of trouble or tragedy. Again, we never saw that coming.

  We’ve tried to take this opportunity and use it to make the world a little better place. But we’ve also been able to use it to show our daughters what a joy it is to help others, to show kindness and love to people that haven’t been as fortunate as we have. Actually, fortunate is not the best word choice. The better word is blessed. If you had told me ten years ago I would be the dad to three generous-hearted daughters, husband to my very best friend (April Skinner, more about her later), and the author of a popular parenting blog, I would’ve laughed in your face after I’d picked myself up off the ground from laughing so hard. And I expect that most anyone who knew me would have fallen down laughing right alongside me. But for some reason, God decided to do one of those “old chunk of coal but gonna be a diamond someday” routines. He took the reins of my life and steered me right where I was supposed to be. Yep, God dropped me right in the middle of a whirlpool full of estrogen and laughter and a few tears, because girls cry a little. And just as he did on the day he finished making the heavens and the earth, he looked at me knee deep in it and said, “Now, that’s good.”

  And as usual, God was right. It’s so good.

  * * *

  I was born on June 29, 1979. I was born into a quarter-horse ranching family. Back in those days you had to stay in the hospital for at least three days before you could take your baby home, so I was exactly three days old the first time I sat on a horse. It was my granddad’s tradition. Bring the babies home and then put them on a horse—with him holding us, of course. This went for me and all my siblings and cousins
. Stampers were meant to be on horseback, he believed, so you started them young. As young as possible. We all had our own horses as soon as we were physically able to ride by ourselves. Many of these horses had been passed down from generation to generation. We had a couple of Shetlands for the smaller kids, and these were actually the same ponies my own dad had ridden as a kid, before graduating to a full-sized horse. Their names were Surprise and Teeny Tonette. Surprise was Teeny Tonette’s mother. By the time I came along, Surprise was thirty-six years old, and Tonette was thirty-two, which is extremely elderly in equine years.

  If you aren’t familiar with horses, Shetlands have a bit of a reputation for being ornery and sometimes having flat-out mean dispositions. But they were little, and they were broke to death, so anyone could crawl all over them and they’d take good care of us. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t take a small bite out of you if they saw the opportunity. But according to my granddad and dad, that was just part of growing up a rancher. I was the oldest grandson. So I was expected to be tough. My grandpa would tell me that the ranch would be mine someday and that I had to learn all I could about horses and cows. Learn to train, learn to have a good eye for horseflesh. Know when someone is trying to swindle you. Horse traders don’t have a great reputation for a reason. They are well known for doctoring up a lame horse and trying to sell him for a retail price. I was taught to look beyond that and see the horse, see the details most people don’t see. And I was pretty dang good at it.

  We had bucking chutes on one end of the arena and had bull buck-outs often at the ranch. Hundreds of people would pile into our indoor arenas on Friday and Saturday nights to watch people riding bulls. We’d buck out fifty on a Friday night and fifty-one on a Saturday night. It was called the Stamper Ranch 101 Bull Buck-Out, and it was fun. We had them for years until one of the promoters that helped put the event on wanted to start selling alcohol in the concession stands. My grandfather, the son of an evangelist and a very devout member of the Murphy Church of God, was having none of it. No way. Not a chance. He was a man of principle. He didn’t care if it meant losing money. He wasn’t going to do it. He’d say a prayer before each of the bucking events, asking for the safety of those participating and for everyone who came to have a safe trip home. It was a great childhood, I’m not going to lie. We also had a kids’ event at each performance.