Pioneer Day

I know we don't live in Utah anymore, but we made a little attempt to celebrate Pioneer Day this year. I've been thinking more lately about my heritage and how grateful I am for ancestors who had incredible faith and courage to sacrifice so much for the gospel. They gave up so much to follow the prophet. I am the first to admit that I could do much better about being actively involved in researching my family history. My mom, grandmas, aunts, etc are so good at it and have done so much that I don't even know where to start. Poor excuse, I know. I'm working on it. But... I LOVE learning and researching stories about the ancestors that we already know about. I love learning what life was like to them, trials they endured, things they accomplished, etc. When we lived in Provo right after Jacey was born, I occupied much of my time while Dan was at school learning about my ancestors who were among the first to settle in Utah. When Jacey and I would go to the library for story time every week, we would would always spend a little bit of time in the Utah State History section, and every week I would bring home huge encyclopedia-sized books with information about those ancestors. Not necessarily dates and names, but just what they were like. It was fun to walk with Jacey to the cemetary just a couple blocks from our house and find names of ancestors that were buried there. While I was learning so much about all these people, I promised myself that my kids would know about these people, and that they would grow up hearing these stories so they felt the same connection to them that I did. I realized that I haven't been doing very good at that when we had family home evening last week. We started talking about the pioneers, pulling handcarts, walking the whole way, and not being able to bring very much stuff with them. Jacey asked, "Why didn't they just drive to Utah?" I know we've talked about pioneer stories before, but they must not have sunk in very deep!

So... I decided it was time for a field trip. I called up my friend Bethany, and we decided to take our kids to the Log Cabin Village in Fort Worth. Not exactly LDS church history, but at least it was a little glimpse into what life was like in the 1800s. I know Jacey had a lot more fun sharing the day with her friend Nathan, and it's always fun to see Broden with little guys his own size. They loved the water pump, and everyone took many turns filling the bucket. They enjoyed seeing the mill also, and running around looking at all the different cabins. We loved having a picnic afterwards with the Weeds. I don't know if the outing really accomplished my objective of teaching Jacey what pioneer life was like, but it was a fun day anyway!