Pioneer Day!

I love being able to celebrate Pioneer day. This is one holiday we haven't stuck with any particular tradition. Jeff had the day off from work, so we planned a nice relaxing day at home with the kids. Okay, maybe relaxing with 3 kids around isn't exactly realistic, but we still had a good time. We spent the afternoon baking sugar cookies. Jeff was in charge of assembling all the ingredients and supervising our little culinary-wizards-in-training. I got to roll the dough and then I pulled out all the stops. We got out every single cookie cutter we have (which honestly isn't very many) and the kids got to pick what shapes of cookies we had. Let me tell you they had a good time! We had Easter bunnies and eggs, bats, owls, pumpkins, pine trees, snowmen, gingerbread men and even Santa. After they had cooled we frosted them and then used every kind of sprinkles housed in my spice cupboard to decorate. McKay was more concerned licking the knife then actually decorating, and the counter was covered in sprinkles. It was great! It was one of those moments you hope always stays with your kids.

Between baking and frosting (giving the irresistable treat time to cool), we had a little BBQ. Jeff and I concocted our own baked beans completely from scratch (turned out soo yummy), added a little potato salad, some corn muffins, porked grilled outside and some pink lemonade and we were sitting pretty. No one went hungry. THat's for sure!

As soon as it was dark enough to do fireworks, we dragged blankies outside to watch our own little fireworks. They were surprisingly good. (I say surprisingly because we bought them last year.) Our neighbor ran over one that we hadn't set off yet. It looked like it would still work. Yeah. When a car runs over your fireworks, they're not going to work great. This one (a big one) fell on it's side after the initial lighting and then started it's lovely display of sparks. Only, when they are shooting at you and your little ones, they are slightly less lovely. My ears are still ringing from Lyndsi shrieking in excitement and fear.

It was a fabulous holiday all in all, and I'm so glad we took the time to stay home and make some fun memories with the kids.