I wanted to share our recent Pioneer Day Celebration with you for your webpage.  I posted it on the yahoo group under my pseudoname =) but I wanted to share it with you also in case some people are anxious about being on message boards.

Sarah Perez

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Our stake had a really successful Pioneer Day Celebration and I wanted to share what we did with y'all in case you wanted to do it in the future.

We met at a park from 11 to 2pm the Saturday before the 24th. 

Each ward YW/YM group had to come with a carnival booth and game.  The booth was really just those 10 by 10 easy-ups with a folding table and a sign.  The games included: fishing, face painting, balloon animals, knocking down bottles with baseballs, beanbag toos, photo booth, eating donuts off of a string, etc.  The individual wards paid for the games and prizes.

The Stake Music people put together a little performance with a bluegrass band and a few members of the stake choir performing.

The Stake RS had a quilting booth put up. 

The Stake YM/YW got about 12 kids to do a square dancing number.  It was really the cutest part.  They even dressed up in pioneer clothes.  It was an awesome photo op.

The Stake Primary made a big parade banner with our stake's name on it and pioneers written under it.  They led the primary kids to four different stations around the park while a few of them took turns pulling a handcart.  The stations were crossing a river, climbing a mountain, learning a pioneer song, and then reaching the SLC valley.  Once they got to SLC, they opened the handcart and it had salt water taffy and little bottle of water in it for all of the kids.  It was sooooooo cute.  They did this while the game booths were open. 

The missionaries had a booth where they passed out information about the church to people from the community that showed up.  They also had 500 colorful balloons with "Families are Forever" printed on them that they blew up with helium and passed out.
The genealogy center showed up and presented services that they offer and showed some nicely framed pedigree charts and scrapbooks.

The Emergency Preparedness table was led by the Stake Public Relations folks and they passed out information about 72 hour kits.  That is something that our stake is really trying to press right now.

The stake also provided a BBQ lunch with hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon, and chips.

Our Stake Sports guy had a giant rope from the scouts that we did ward against ward tug of war with, and then high priests against elders quorum.  It was hilarious.  We even had the stick pull game that's so popular at pioneer things. 

My ward collected baby food bottles for months and months.  Then I put little labels on them that said, "I made butter at Pioneer Day 2006."  We put a little whipping cream in the jars and the kids shook them for about three to five minutes.  Then we let them spread their homemade butter on crackers.  I was so incredibly surprised by how many kids had not done it before and how popular it was.  I had made 150 baby jars and we had to close down because we ran out. 

It was fun, fun, fun!  Because it was at a park we had so many people from the come from the community.  It was an awesome experience.