Happy Pioneer Day!

In our church, July 24th is Pioneer Day, the day we celebrate the pioneers of our church and everything that they went through to allow us to have what we have today. Anyway, I have never seen it celebrated like they do here in Utah though. It's a pretty big deal here and they have all kinds of events for it. We went to a kind of fair type thing in a big park and they had all kinds of boothes and games and stuff all relating to the early pioneers. It was pretty cool. Side note: When I told Melia it was Pioneer Day and that we were going to a fair she got really excited. She ran and told Bo, "Daddy, Daddy! Happy Pineapple Day!"


So for quite a while now, Melia has been wanting to ride a horse. We had a horse that lived down the street in Paradise and every morning, we would walk by and she would ask me if she could ride it. I would say, "Well, we don't know the people who own him, so we can't ride that horse." And then she would say, "Well, we could knock on their door and ask them what their name is." To her, that would solve the problem of us not knowing them and then we could ride their horse. How do you explain away that logic? Anyway, we tried a couple of times with a friend's horse and at a fair, but she decided they were too big and only wanted to ride a little horse. So when I saw these ponies at the Pioneer Day thing, I knew this was it. I earned a couple of notches on my mom belt by standing in the long line in the hot sun with the tons of other parents and kids while Bo and the girls walked around to look at the other boothes and stuff. Seeing the smile on Melia's face while she rode made it worth it though. :)


Auntie Azie and Grandma Carol went with us and have been a big help to us taking care of the girls through our unpacking process.


The girls got a little tired of looking around the Pioneer museum so Melia decided to entertain Naiya by playing her pioneer "kazoo" that she made earlier.


Later that day, we got together with a bunch of our good friends from So Cal at Alex and Heidi's house for a BBQ. Vero showed up decked out in her pioneer digs in true Veronica style. It took me back to the days when she would show up for church in random wigs, etc. :) It was so good to hang out and catch up with everyone. Even though we hadn't seen them for a long time, we picked right back up where we left off as if we hadn't even been apart. That's the cool thing about great friends.


It was kind of surreal to see all of our mini me's running around playing together. This is a picture of the world's shortest balloon toss competition. One toss and that was it. For all contestants.


We had a great time until the very end. Melia was wearing some dress up shoes and tripped coming down the wooden stairs outside and tumbled all the way down. It really scared us, and her, and we weren't sure if she was really ok until about an hour later at home. She started acting like herself again and we are grateful!