Reckless Adventures: Pioneer Day Youth Parade

Utah celebrates its statehood on July 24th, also known as "Pioneer Day". This is the day that the pioneers first set foot in the Salt Lake Valley. They have a parade and lots of fun. The week before, they also have a youth parade, where youth groups from around the state can come and participate. Our Stake paticipated with a float and an invitation for all Primary-aged children to walk in the parade.

Before putting too much thought into it, I signed Sarah up to be in the parade. My thoughts afterwards were: Do I want to do this? I'll have to bring Steven and Samantha, too, because Ian will be at work. How will this work out logistically? Wait, anyone under the age of 5 needs to be in a stroller or wagon? We don't have a wagon! And the stroller is definitely too small for 3 children. What if Sarah wants to walk? I have to be there how early?

Saturday July 17 finally arrived (and Ian found a wonderful wagon for us to use!) and we arrived at the staging area promptly at 0830. About 0900 I learned that the parade doesn't start until 10am! At least they had brought snacks and activities for the children. After an initial period of leg-clinging, Sarah set off to explore the area, find rocks for her collection, and play with the other kids. Steven remained in the wagon and was happy as long as he had something to eat-- crackers, goldfish, pretzels, popsicles, fruit snacks.

Here is Steven in the wagon happily snacking away!

Samantha was happy as long as she was being held. She even fell asleep!

Here she is in the Moby Wrap. Gotta love hands-free baby holding!

At 1000 the parade started with Police sirens and Officers on motorcycles going down the street. We watched a number of floats go by before it was our turn to walk the 4 blocks to the end of the parade where they were having a Children's Fair.

Here are two of my favorite floats:

I thought the Cuckoo Clock look was cute.

This one was titled "Listen to a Prophet's Voice" and had a picture of President Thomas S. Monson on an iPod. Following the float were a number of people dressed up as previous prophets.

During the parade (Where I pulled and everyone else rode) we got to walk past a number of stands that called out who was in the parade, and we passed one of the local TV news cameras and one of the morning news anchors. Did you know they have a nifty contraption that can put a camera over the heads of the parade walkers? It was cool to see. There were also a number of people sitting along the parade route watching and waving. I even saw a friend from our old neighborhood and said "hi" to him.

I kept looking behind me to make sure that all hats stayed on and that Sarah and Steven were OK in the wagon. This is what I saw in the middle of the parade. Classic!

Steven has decided that he was hot and tired and done, and Sarah is too busy playing to wave anymore!

When we reached the end of the parade and the Children's Fair, I was too hot and tired to stay there too long. And there were lots of long lines for the activities. So we stayed there long enough for Sarah to take a ride down one of the slides and then walked back to the car.

Sarah was so funny about the slide. She stood in line to get on this one (a big blow-up whale) but when it came time to climb up to the top, she hesitated and needed assistance climbing up to the top and sat looking down for a few moments before beginning her descent. She did well until a moment after this shot was taken and she flipped over for a face-plant at the bottom. She still wanted to do it again, but the line had gotten much longer and Samantha and Steven were done.

We walked back to the car (with a brief stop at an ice cream store for Sarah to get a cone) and got in the car.