The 24th Celebration a.k.a. Pioneer Days

When you grow up in Snowflake - at least for the majority of my extended family, the 24th celebration is right up there with Christmas on the excitement meter. I don't really know why we call it the 24th. It is rarely held on the 24th of July, but since we celebrate that day as the day the Mormon Pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley, it's always been the 24th celebration to me. Growing up, the celebration usually fell on the weekend closest to the date, but this year Snowflake decided they would hold it on the 3rd weekend in July every year.

For a small Mormon town with a big Pioneer heritage, such celebrations mean a lot of preparation, parades, barbeques, family reunions, rodeos and a huge load on the town sewer system, or in my families case, the septic tank.

I always felt lucky growing up that my birthday fell so close to the town celebration. My birthday is on July 20th and more often than not, it seemed to fall on one of the celebration days. I always liked to claim that all the family members of all of the town liked to show up to celebrate my birthday. I guess the time I felt really jipped was when my Mom and Dad decided that they would take each child out to eat for their birthday. This was a big deal for someone growing up in a family of 13 kids in a small town. Going out to eat was a big deal (ask me about the famous "MacDonalds" can someday), so that was a great birthday treat. Well, it seemed like with all of the busyness of the celebration, my going "out to eat" ended up being the town barbeque. I think I let it be known that that wasn't really fair once - seeing as the whole family went to that function, and my parents took me out a few weeks after my birthday. Who says that being squeaky wheel doesn't get you anywhere?

This year we had taken our trailer up to Snowflake for my Dad's funeral and left it there for our stay during the celebration (we don't like to push the limits of the septic tank any more than it's already pushed). I thoughtthat maybe we would get up there for a bit, but life happened and we didn't. I knew Jeff wouldn't be able take off anymore time from work to go early and I didn't want to have 2 cars up there (gas is too expensive), so I convinced Amy that we should go up earlier together and have our husbands come up with our truck later that evening after work.

I was able to go to lunch with my former roommate, Amy Larson, my cousin Cindy and Marnie Scott McCauley. Heidi was supposed to join us, but the antibiotics she's been on made her sick.

Jeff and David came up Thursday night and Friday morning the Festivities began. Our Flake rodeo was at 9am. That was always a highlight for me, but my kids don't like to participate yet. Cooper was thinking about barrel racing, but he was a bit unsure about himself on Business, my parent's horse. I think he's competitive enough to think that he doesn't have a good chance of winning he doesn't want to compete also. The other horses were to slow for his liking. He did ride Joy around a bit outside the rodeo grounds.

It was disappointing that the rodeo grounds have fallen into such disrepair. Theycondemned the old "grand stands" that were there for years, so we had to sit on our tailgates to enjoy the rodeo. It made for a lot less visiting and being able to see who was there and not participating. I wish our Flake family would be able to raise funds to help build some more stands for day rodeos.

After the rodeo we had a good potluck dinner and then a program. I always love all the parts of the Flake reunion.