Becoming Utahns

So every weekend the questions is "Which lake are we going to?" I would plan, cook, and pack meals along with anything we might need for being outside with a baby. Then we're out in the sun all day, the kids miss naps, and we get home, bringing a big mess of dirty clothes and coolers. Then Sunday morning I go on a cleaning rampage, go to church, cook, clean, and put the kids to bed. Then I realized I'd had enough. Isn't the weekend supposed to be a time to rest and catch up? Now every other weekend is my choice.

This past Pioneer Day weekend was my first very own Helena's-choice. After living here for 9 years, I decided it was time to participate in some Pioneer Day festivities. During the week Shannon and I took the boys to the expo center that's close to see the parade floats up close. Here come the two best ones, one because of skill and the other out of a slight personal bias.

It was amazing to see how much work people put into these floats. So many great ideas and time-consuming details. Of course the one about the Miracle of the Gulls won first place. It was our favorite too. It had a "Cricket Cookbook" and huge numbers of hand-made crickets, each about the size of Eli.

Then us moms got the three buddies together to go to This Is The Place. They got to pet animals, ride a train and horse, and even learn.

Here they are writing their abc's in a pioneer school house.

And waiting for the candy cannon to shoot out taffy. I guess they didn't have snickers back then.

Finally, on Saturday morning, we dragged Bri out to the parade downtown. It was fun to be out in the community, seeing people's pride in their heritage and cheering for their ward's float, kid in the band, or favorite Republican, I mean politician.

Doesn't his face just say "I'd rather be fishing"?

On the train ride home we talked with this saint-of-a-lady that nurses kittens that were taken to the shelter too young to be taken from their mother and brings them back (after feeding them a special food every 4 hours and getting them used to kids and dogs) to be adopted. Eli was eager to have Shadow meet his (toy) kitten.

I guess next weekend we'll trade in the warm fuzzies for catching fish.