Pioneer Day 2014

Remember last year's Pioneer Day celebration? We did the pioneer games and Dutch oven dinner. The kids had so much fun they were super excited to do it again this year. The Drama Queen and I started planning the day before so we had time to get things together. We decided we wanted to do a craft so we tore more than 500 strips of fabric to make authentic rag dolls.

Tossing rings

3-legged race

We also looked up some new games and pioneer stories on the internet. My sweetie had to work since it was a state holiday only, so Drama Queen peeled a bunch of potatoes and carrots for the Dutch oven chicken stew and I prepared a peach cobbler in the 2nd one. Drama Queen also wanted to make bread in the bread maker (not quite the authentic way, but delicious!) so she spent time making 4 loaves. It took her about 15 hours total to get them all cooked.

We had so much fun! The Gym Rat brought his cute girlfriend and my Little Sis and her family came as did Bossy and her family. We started with the pioneer stories and then we played the hoop toss game. Fajita and Sport were amazingly good at it and they set a new record of 22 catches. Then it was time for the 3-legged race. I got to judge the race this time. It seems that the winners were always the ones closest in size who work well together. The Gym Rat totally lost after I put a moratorium on carrying...

Then we sat in a circle and played the Elements game. My favorite part was watching the Dog Walker pretend to be a dolphin! Although the Drama Queen did a great job with her bird impressions too.

Making rag dolls

We had just gotten the rag doll stuff out when my sweetie called everyone over for dinner. The food was amazing as usual and everyone enjoyed the Drama Queen's hard work. Then we went back to our rag dolls before eating the peach cobbler.

Let's eat!

I was a little sad that the Gym Rat and his girl had to leave before square dancing and fireworks, but the rest of us had so much fun! Even Little Sis got her hubby to dance and he actually admitted it wasn't all that bad. Sorry, no pics, I was enjoying myself too much to even remember that part.

I hope you all had an amazing Pioneer Day too!

Summer Swimming..Having a Blast!

It's become a tradition in our family to sign up for swimming lessons each summer.  A wonderful neighbor of mine is our go-to and she does wonderful at helping the kids.  My little ones finished up their two week session yesterday and we wanted to be sure to share a few pics.  This was little Baby Doll's first year.  I just love this picture of her doing the back float.  Bet you recognize her helper..that's Sport!  He was the aide for both hers and Curly's lessons.  It was sure nice because I know I could count on him to take care of them both.  Thanks to Fajita for snapping all these sweet pictures for me.  As you can guess, I was still home making jam with the Activity Girls. 

I hope you all had a wonderful Pioneer Day.  Ours was full of hard work and lots of fun.  (But isn't that how we do everything around here?)  I'll get pictures and post up tomorrow about our shenanigans.  Kids start school Monday.  I am so not looking forward to going back to such early wake-ups!  For now I'm going to see if I can maybe get some sleep before the last "day-off."

This summer has gone so fast!

Jam Anyone?

Remember I told you on Monday that we picked all the apricots off our tree? Well, yesterday was Pack Meeting, so they just had to sit in buckets for a little while. But sometime on Tuesday I had this brilliant beyond brilliant plan... I could teach my Activity Days girls how to make jam!

So on Tuesday about 5:00 I ran fliers to all of their houses, suggesting that they come over at 10:00 this morning if they wanted to learn to make jam. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to see very many of them. It was such short notice and it's summer, but I figured it was a great way to make sure I got myself out of bed and started early.

I was wrong.

By 10:15, I had 8 girls here all excited to learn some new skills. None of them had made jam before, but they were all willing to do whatever I asked of them. In no time they had pitted all four buckets of apricots.

Then they helped the Drama Queen put them through the food processor to make pulp. Some girls stirred and others measured sugar. We had a great system and in an hour and a half we had completed 6 batches. The girls loved using bread to wipe up the remaining jam that clung to the pan so they could sample the yummy sweetness.

By noon they were all gone home, each with a hot pint jar of jam tucked safely into a paper sack so they wouldn't get burned.

It was so much fun! I think maybe we just started a new tradition.

Dance Auditions for Princess

Princess loves to dance! Did I tell you she made the Ballet Intensive program at BYU? She was super excited back in February when she was accepted, but I think she is pretty nervous to be away from home for 2 weeks.

Oh, she has been at camp before, but never for more than 5 days, and that was Girl Scout camp and she usually had Prima Donna with her. It is so amazing to see how beautifully she is growing up! Do you know that she will be 18 in just a couple of short months?!

Anyway, she has a new opportunity to audition and because she is at BYU, she can't audition in person with Crafty and Prima Donna. The Girl Scout National Convention is going to be in Salt Lake City for the first time ever and they are having an opening ceremony. Of course they need to have dancers!

So before she left, Princess and I went to the studio and filmed her dancing. I thought you might enjoy watching her for a minute or so. We have Drama Queen to thank for the professional video.

Click Here to See Princess's Dance!