The Fairest of Them All... Sort of...

I babysat some cute kids on Monday.  While we were playing a game one of the boys looked up at me and said "You're like Snow White.  Hair as black as ebony...well sort of...on that side"  (Which was the side the sun wasn't shining on. HAHA)  He got interrupted but I imagine he was going to say "skin white as snow and lips red as blood".  I guess I need to work on my tan.  But, if he wants to compare me with the woman known as "the fairest of them all" I am definitely okay with that. ;)

This weekend our city celebrated Pioneer Day.  They go all out here.  The Pioneer Day celebration is bigger than the Independence Day celebration!  This year there was a rodeo, a dance, a parade, a lot of food,  a pageant, and fireworks.  It was a really fun weekend. 

We started by going to the rodeo and happened to see one of our friends children in the barrel racing competition.  She was VERY good!  She turned sharper than any of the other competitors, but she wasn't quite as fast as a couple of them. We left right after her because it started pouring down rain.  We went to the dance and learned a new line dance.  We both love to dance and really enjoyed practicing the steps we learned in the class we took last summer.  Thank goodness Allan has such a good memory.  I had forgotten almost all of them!

We went to the rest of the festivities with some friends of ours and enjoyed watching their sweet little girls.  Things are always so much more fun when kids are involved because they find magic in so many little things.
Here are a couple of our favorite floats.

I think this guy was my favorite though.  I didn't get the best picture but he was laying down on his horse with arrows sticking out of his back.  He rode his horse backward quite well!

 

The pageant was great.  They all had great singing voices.  They square danced and performed one of the youth dances from the Temple celebration a few years ago.  They reenacted several stories like the Sweetwater Rescue, and told other stories that we hadn't heard before.  I actually cried twice.  If you know me well you know I don't cry easily.  

We enjoyed the fireworks too, especially when our friend handed us some earplugs.  The fireworks were really close to where we were sitting so it was pretty loud.  There was a slight breeze so after the fireworks exploded we could see their ashes slowly floating away - it was very pretty.  We were also grateful for the breeze because it saved us from the ash falling onto our heads.

Allan's custom earplugs came in and are working great!  He no longer comes home from church with a huge headache!  Hooray for modern technology!

I did bubble wrap again in primary this week.  The kids were so excited they literally couldn't stay in their seats.  As we sang some of them would slowly creep up, hoping that I wouldn't see them, and then try to stomp on the bubble wrap.  I also introduced a singing ear - one of the teachers would walk down the hall while we were singing, listening to see how far they could be heard, then tape the ear to the wall to mark the spot.  I told the kids to walk around the church after class to see how loud they were.  They were very excited about seeing it.  It failed though because someone stole the ear before church got out!  Who would want to steal a big blue ear?  I'm going to try again next week, hopefully it won't get stolen again.