Pioneer Day Celebrations

For those of you not from Utah, you may not know that July 24th is a big day for Utah. In fact, Utahns party all week.  The 24th is the day that Brigham Young first set his eyes on the Salt Lake valley and proclaimed, "This is the right place. Drive on."  Now that we are officially Utahns, we had to partake in all of the festivities.

One of them was the local Draper Days parade.  We found a cozy spot along the parade route and got ready to watch all the action.  It was great and holy smokes, my kids walked away with a ton of candy. It was out of control.  But they sure had fun collecting, and eating, all of it.

The big parade for the state is called the Days of '47 and is through downtown Salt Lake. This thing is seriously a massive event.  They say that 250,000 people line the streets to be a part of the parade.  We were not one of the masses.  But, the day before the parade we went to the Sandy Convention Center to preview all of the floats.  They were amazing; very intricate, well planned, and executed.  It was fantastic. We could see all of the floats without the heat and delay. I didn't mind that so much. Plus, we didn't miss out on any candy because candy is prohibited at the Days of '47 parade. It was a win-win for me.

At the end of the week, I was able to go with Rinar and our new friends Brad and Melissa to the Conference Center to watch the Pioneer Concert put on by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We also took Raef and Zach because we thought they would enjoy the music.  Hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir should be on every persons' bucket list. It is awe-inspiring. 

On the drive to downtown, Raef got sick, like queasy, vomit every 20 minutes kind of sick.  And Zach brought a book and couldn't be bothered to actually watch any of the concert.  So while it was going on, Raef had to crawl out of our seats, which were smack-dab in the middle of the row to go to the bathroom at least 3 times. The people on either side of us probably wanted to strangle us. Even I was annoyed and it was my child.   

But the concert was beautiful and I am glad I got to hear it. Next year, I will leave the kids home.