Pioneer Day

The 24th of July is Pioneer Day in Utah. We celebrate the Mormon Pioneers that crossed the plains to give us the religious freedom we were being denied within the boundaries of the United States. What courage that must have taken to pack a few of the most important possessions for your entire family into one wagon or handcart and start walking to somewhere wholly unknown to anyone except Native Americans who didn't speak your language and mistrusted all white people (for good reason).

That is true faith.

To celebrate, we dressed in our favorite red, white, and blue outfits and headed to This Is The Place Heritage Park.

 We played several pioneer games and did laundry like the pioneers. We saw rag rugs like Great Great Grandma used to make for a living. We then found a cute little park that the kids loved.

 We rode horses.

 We watched the Native Americans dance and sing.

 We also caught a little show of pioneers singing and playing instruments, and one lady came and danced with the children, which S and Seth loved. Kai wanted no part in it, but he was patient while we had fun.

And then S did this while we were waiting for the parade to start:

This last picture is S exactly. Everywhere we go, she finds solace playing with dirt and rocks. Even when there are toys around, she still chooses the dirt about half the time. It makes me incredibly curious to know where she got that habit from, but I will never know for sure.

We had a blast! Later, we did daytime fireworks as a family before Jason took the boys to a neighbor's house to do nighttime fireworks. We were all going to go, but S was so worn out from the whole thing that she really just needed to go to bed, so I stayed home with her.

While we were there, I had a little run-in with another mother. There was a candy cannon, which I didn't want to go to because it's always a huge mess in Utah because there are so many children around here and the parents get really competitive. Anyway, Seth talked me into going. When the cannon went off, I carried S over to the candy because she stumbles a LOT when she's tired and I didn't want her to get stepped on. We found two pieces of candy and she easily picked up the first one. She was having difficulty with the second one though. (Coordination is a common problem for her because of past trauma.) She tried 3 times and missed each time. She was being really patient though, which I was praising her for. Then a kid (probably 5 years old) tried to stick his hand between her hand and the candy to take the candy from her. I don't know if this kid knew that she had tried so many times to pick it up, but I told him that he had to let her have that particular piece of candy. She eventually picked it up though, and she was very pleased with herself. Seth and Kai were also candy-hunting, but I wasn't monitoring their candy grabbing at all, just keeping an eye on them. When S had her two pieces of candy, I called to Seth and Kai and we went back to our little red wagon. Seth and Kai had gotten about 4 pieces of candy each. I was unwrapping one piece of candy for each child when an angry woman stormed up holding the hand of the little boy whom I had told couldn't have S's piece of candy. The woman yelled, "You're kids got plenty of candy, by the way, and mine didn't get any, so thanks a lot!" And she stormed off. She left so fast her kids were barely able to keep up. I was so shocked that she was across the street by the time I even registered who she was or why I was in trouble. I quickly gathered up the extra candy and loaded the kids into the wagon so I could go after her and explain, but by the time I was ready to follow her, she was gone. I looked for her quite a bit, but I never did see her again. I really prayed for the opportunity to make things right with her. I felt like neither I nor the boy's mom had been a very good example to him, and I wanted to end things differently. I wanted to explain the coordination issues with S and that I normally wouldn't have cared, but she needed that win after all her patience. (I was sort of saving everyone else also, because she can really throw a fit when she's tired and gets something taken from her!) I'm sure there is more to her story that I don't know also, and I wish I could have had the opportunity to find out what I was obviously missing.

Despite this little hiccup and the lack of opportunity to correct it, the day was wonderful. I'm so grateful for the Pioneers who gave everything to come here and make things better for those that followed. Every generation in the USA has benefited from their sacrifice, LDS or not, living in Utah or not, and they deserve to be remembered.