Saturday, August 18, 2012

Pioneer Day of Play

We usually have a family reunion over the 24th of July, so we haven't participated in the church's celebration of Pioneer Day for years. This summer, however, we didn't have a family reunion that weekend and Ammon wanted to be a part of the Stake baseball tournament, so we decided to attend the all-day celebration.

Every year on a Saturday closest to Pioneer Day, the Salmon LDS Stake hosts an all-day baseball tournament at the church ballfield on Hwy 28 with multiple teams from different wards competing. As adults and youth compete in the tournament, there's activities for younger kids on the opposite side of the large field, too.

This year, there were 3 teams from our ward: 2 adult and 1 youth. Ammon practiced with the youth team for weeks prior to the event. He really enjoyed practicing and playing ball. On the morning of the 21st (the day of the celebration), his team was the first to play against the Salmon Singles' team at 8:00am. For each round of the tournament, teams played either 3 innings or a half hour, whichever came first. Games were played all day from 8:00am to 9:00pm!! Ammon's team played two more times after their first game: late morning, and early afternoon. They didn't win any of their games, but they played hard, and they had a great time! Ammon had so much fun!




When we came back to watch Ammon's afternoon game, we brought the younger boys and their swim trunks. They didn't like watching the baseball games (they thought they were boring, and didn't know a lot of the people playing). So instead, they played in the water games set up on the other end of the field.



After they got soaking wet (Kanyon wasn't too happy about that, apparently), they dried off in the hot sun for a little while. Then they watched some pioneer presentations by Sister Cockrell. She showed the kids how to make butter and homemade ice cream using her antiques. Then all the kids got to taste the butter and eat some of the homemade ice cream in mini cones. They loved it!

Josh and I don't like baseball, and we rarely attend the church's 24th celebration. But this year, since Ammon competed, it kind of forced us to be there off and on all day. And surprisingly, we all had a good time! Ammon loved playing baseball (one of the adult teams from our ward won the stake tournament again), the boys liked playing in the water with their friends and eating ice cream, and we all ate a delicious pork dinner served by the Stake Presidency!

No comments: