Pioneer Celebrations 2012

We were able to celebrate the Mormon Pioneers in several ways this year. Our stake has an annual childrens' parade and pancake breakfast that Alden, Roland, and I attended. Aaron had gone to Utah for a family wedding and took Emmett with him. Emmett almost decided not to go on the trip, just because he didn't want to miss our 15 minute little parade, but we convinced him and he had a great time with his Dad and Papa. Our fun in Mesa included the parade, the breakfast, and some pioneer games and activities afterwards. The bow and arrows and slingshots were the bigest favorite of the boys. We even broke out the crepe paper to decorate bikes, although our pioneer outfits were pretty sad & consisted of plaid shirts.

Also while Aaron was gone I gave a talk in sacrament morning about pioneers. I talked a lot about other pioneers, rather than just the early Mormon Saints: Lehi's family, the Jaredites, and the Children of Israel. I was helped out during the talk by Roland, who snuck up to the front of the chapel and stood in front of the podium during the second half. I think he even kicked the podium a few times. He mostly scowled at me, which made me smile and made me much less nervous. Guess he was mad I wasn't sitting with him.

We had pack meeting the night of the 24th, which went well. I managed to coordinate 6 peach cobblers and 3 batches of homemade vanilla ice cream. (I am the cub committee chair.) One of my den leaders texted me that they were the best refreshments yet!

We left for Pinetop the morning after pack meeting, to stay until right before school starts. I can't tell you how much we love it here. Today we went to the Pioneer Day celebrations in Snowflake. We watched the parade with my brother and sister-in-law and the cousins. Thanks to Missy and her family, we got a great parking spot and good seats too. The boys collected a ton of candy so they were pleased enough. We caught a BBQ lunch at the church, which I loved but the boys didn't. Then we went to the fair for a while, but the weather was a factor - the rain and wind, along with lightning made them deflate all the bouncy houses, which is all the boys really wanted to do. I loved the weather though, as long as it wasn't raining too hard. It was cool, but not cold. So nice in the midst of our hot AZ summers. We watched some kids ride a mechanical bull, walked through the booths, bought some snowcones, and headed home. I was anxious to get home to watch some Olympics! And the boys were anxious to get home to do this:

Alden has been desparate to make our own bows and arrows since the stake pioneer activity. He looked up directions on Google, and this week we finally bought supplies and got them started. The arrows have foam on them, so I'm hoping we have no injuries. Wish us luck! All in all, we wrung all we could out of Pioneer Day this year. Those people were amazing!