Pioneer Day Celebration

What is Pioneer Day, you ask?
Pioneer Day (also archaically called the Day of Deliverance) is an official holiday celebrated on July 24 in the U.S. state of Utah. This day commemorates the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into Utah’s Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847 where the Latter-day Saints settled after being forced from Nauvoo, Illinois and other locations in the eastern United States. The Mormon pioneers viewed their arrival as the founding of a Mormon homeland, hence Pioneer Day.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Day_(Utah)) Even though it is only an official holiday in the state of Utah, "Mormons" around the world take the opportunity to remember and celebrate these courageous Pioneer men and women who endured so much for their Freedom.

This year, we had quite a fabulous Pioneer Day Celebration of our own here in the Midwest.
Our day started out with a human-only-fueled transportation trip to the local bakery for breakfast. Translation: We initiated the Larsen family into our Saturday morning bike ride to Sandy's Donuts. YUMMY! (I so wouldn't have made it as a Pioneer -I am a whimp or maybe just really out of shape! LOL!)
While the kids played at the Park with Ryan, I went and did a little manual labor at the Brotherson's. BTW-Their kitchen is looking awesome!
The afternoon consisted of Brett at the Barber Shop (aka: my kitchen ;) and us expanded our family by four children. LOL! (The Disher kids came to play for the afternoon) All the kids were awesome but it does give you an appreciation for Pioneer families that suddenly doubled their family size along the trek.
We finished our night off with a Pioneer Day Celebration our ancestors would be proud of. Some of our Ward family, the Walens, graciously opened their home and yard and barn and creativity to welcome a good 70 of us wannnabe Pioneers. It was so much fun!!!
We started the evening out with a good ol' BBQ. YUMMY! Good food and good friends never get old!

They also had lots of fun things for the kids (and kids at heart) to do. They had set up a ping pong and pool table and a volleyball net. They have a fabulous playground/sand box for the little kids to go crazy in. And they even did Pioneer games. Sister Walen gathered all the children for a little pow-wow beforehand to explain everything. They had Pioneer coloring pages, and shook jars to make home-made butter. They were even going to hand wash clothes but ran out of time. All of it was so much fun!

My favorite part was our Pioneer Family Trek. Joy Walen has such a great imagination and it was amazing! So amazing that it deserves it's own post! So stay tuned for our Handcart Trek! Here's a preview of some of the other Handcart companies.

Happy Pioneer Day!