Celebrating Pioneer Day

For those of you who are not familiar with the LDS church, each July 24th "Pioneer Day" is celebrated. This day memorializes all of the hardships that the early LDS settlers faced traveling west while being persecuted. I can remember as a young girl going to Primary activities and having big bbqs and pic nics with homemade "covered wagons". What fun we had!

Now it is my boys' turn to enjoy in the fun. This past Thursday their Primary had an activity. I had to work so Ian took the boys and they had a great time. I showed up for the last few moments and was bummed to find out Ian had forgotten the camera. However, we have a wonderful man in our ward who is always taking pictures and he was there and saved the day. Today at church there were bags of pictures for each family in the foyer. I was so excited especially to see pictures of Ian with the boys. We are missing Ian a lot this week as he is up in Wisconsin at Boy Scout Camp (I am sure having the time of his life:).

So, I wanted to take a few moments to scan in some of the pictures to show you. They are pictures of the boys in their "pioneer clothes", "driving" the wagon, pulling a handcart and listening to stories. The boys got to walk a trail and even talked about snake bites (in a couple of pictures Jacob is showing off the snake) They wore their purple bandanas for the rest of the day, even though Target!

I am so thankful that Ian is such a good daddy and just throws himself into whatever the boys are doing. Having him gone this week with less contact than even when he is on a ship is going to be trying. I have gotten spoiled seeing him every day and it makes me realize how hard it will be to go back to "sea" duty and how thankful I am that for now he is home.

Trip to Ft Wayne, Indiana

This past weekend we had the opportunity to travel the 200 miles down to see my cousins Melissa and Tara and their sweet families along with my Aunt Doreen and Uncle Jeff who were in town visiting them. I got to see all of them last year but Ian and Jacob have not seen them since Jacob was 10 months old and Nathan had not yet gotten to meet them. Melissa and Tara each have two adorable kiddos under the age of 3 so all six kids together were so much fun to watch. Nathan and Melissa's daughter Amanda hit it off and were having the best of time. Nathan also just loved Tara's 5 month old baby boy Cooper. It was nice to see Nathan so in love with him and being gentle. It shows us how he hopefully will be in the future. Jacob just loves all the little ones period....but that is Jacob:)

We had an awesome trip with zero traffic. We enjoyed our time there bbqing, getting totally rained out (which just made it more fun) church with them and a fun lunch my Aunt had before we headed back. On the way home we had to stop at Cabelas since Ian has decided it is his goal to visit every single one. That makes number 4 and I personally have seen enough:) All my "men" love it there and I have to admit the animals are pretty neat.

I am thankful we had the opportunity to go down there and visit. Sometimes it is a bummer living so far from family.

I am attaching a few pictures of our trip and a video of Jacob "swimming" or I should say jumping in the pool!