Need another July holiday?

If the answer's yes, then, as Brigham said, "this is the place." Today is Pioneer Days, a state holiday in Utah. It's easily as big a deal as the 4th of July here, with massive fireworks shows and everything.

Robert Kirby, a local newspaper columnist, had a funny column about the holiday yesterday. Kirby is LDS, but he is what I would consider a "normal Mormon." He wrote:

You can also be your own Utah pioneer. A hundred years from now, your descendants could be telling their children how Great-great-grandpa lost his job with Microsoft, got persecuted in the Seattle real-estate market and drove a U-Haul to Zion. And when he got here, there was nothing but Mormons and highly inflammatory liquor laws as far as the eye could see.

Pretty funny! Last night we went over the the Pioneer Days Parade preview. This is the most awesome way to see a parade I can imagine. The floats are inside (translation, in an air conditioned building), up close, and you can walk through them at your own pace. It was pretty awesome! And, for the record, there were entries by the Episcopal Diocese of Utah, the Pentecostal church, and other secular entities. Of course there were lots of "stakes" (LDS churches) well. This was the boys' favorite float. It's Shrek, Donkey & Dragon:
The famous golden spike of the railroad joining east & west: Some ramblings on living in Utah...there are interesting dynamics involved in living here, because our day-to-day lives are actually pretty great (aside from the month of July, which is just ridiculously HOT, and January, when the valley is choked by an inversion). We've made a fair amount of friends, partly because we've made an effort to establish friendships (since we have no family around and haven't lived here since middle school) and partly because the boys are older so we have more freedom and flexibility in our days. It makes for a weird situation though because we like it here in a lot of respects, but we still don't want to be here long-term. After living here a year, I honestly think it's a smaller part of the population than you might think that has a disproportionate amount of power in structuring laws, cultural attitudes, etc. And just thinking about putting the boys in school where over half the kids, for example, all get baptized at the same time or all go to church together on Sunday just puts a knot in my stomach. So then you're faced with private school tuition...blah, blah, blah...I guess my point is that there are a lot of good points to living here too - it's just complicated.

Anyways, I need to make a couple pies for a friend's BBQ tonight...

Happy Pioneer Days y'all!