Today is July 24th, the date that Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley after being expelled from their homes and businesses in Illinois and Missouri. One of my great, great grandfathers, Chauncey Webb, a blacksmith from Nauvoo, was with President Young’s company. I suppose bringing your blacksmith with you was like having your favorite mechanic on a cross-country move.
I read yesterday about some of the foods the pioneers enjoyed after they were established in the valley for a while. I always pictured the pioneer experience as sparse and desperate, but started looking at things differently when I learned about the abundance they eventually enjoyed as their crops and orchards matured. http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/entertainment2/58169927-223/cheney-utah-pioneers-mormon.html.csp
The eight currently in our household are anticipating our holiday celebration tomorrow. My daughter’s family has spent some time with us as they prepare for her husband to enter the CHP Academy in a few weeks. He will become another first responder helping protect the innocent and upholding the law like our soldier, our son who recently completed EMT training and our son who takes the Bar in California this week. What a great crop of men we have been blessed with. Because we have 3 young children at our home we will enjoy a child-friendly celebration with pioneer games based on authentic activities, a homemade chili and bread stick picnic and (non-authentic) smore’s – come on you have to have a bonfire at some point, right?
So here’s a cheer for Pioneer Day with a nod of gratitude to the hearty faithful souls who helped settle the wild west and build temples so families could be sealed together forever.
Picnic near the stream on our property
Games – Bean-GO (Could you have bean a pioneer?)
Stick horse racing with squirt guns for prairie fires and bison
Bean bag Toss
Musical Chairs
Indian Pictographs
Cookie making
A homemade chili and breadstick picnic on the grass with cold watermelon, grapes, peach crisp and coconut cookie s’mores.
Maybe a pioneer scavenger hunt with activities that pioneer children did (if the mood strikes.) Happy Pioneer Day!
