I used to love the 24th of July. Now it's a different story. Well not the 24th it's self...just the carnival that we do in the morning after the parade. Let me explain...
Last year they tried to have a Stripling Warrior Parade and it kind of bombed. But we did have brother and Sister Holland come down for the event and it was very nice. BUT, the Days of 47 Parade committee from SLC came down and took it over. Which seemed fine at the time. We didn't know that they were going to PERMANENTLY take it over. We are just a humble little town and out stake is the one who puts the carnival on as a fund raiser to help give each ward a little extra money during the up coming year. It has always been great. I never feel bad about buying $20 worth of tickets and letting my kids do whatever they want because I knew that even if they didn't use them all the money still went back to the stake. WELL...the Days of 47 are now taking all the money. It is now a, lets make the stake still do all the work and we'll reap the results. So I was TICKED!!! Still am kinda. Can you tell? We were told that we only needed to do 2 booths. One for the YM and one for the YW so the High Priest and RS not longer had to help out. So that meant one less game from us and the RS didn't have to sell pies or help out with the scone booth. Fine. SO the YW were assigned to do a Pop the Balloon booth and the boys did the Fish Pond. Luckily we already had ha fish pond in our closet at the church so we didn't have to make one or buy one. BUT we did have to but some cork board and a million balloons and darts for our booth. So we start off in the hole right off the bat. When the carnival started I went and bought two $5 passes and told Ben and David to go have fun. They came back 5 minutes later and said they were done and wanted cash to go buy a snow cone or food. I said no because in EVERY year past you could get food with the tickets you bought. Nope not this year. So Nope we weren't going to spend extra $ on food. Which really sucked because had I known I would have bought $1 of tickets and gave them the $. The wards that did food actually got to keep their money. I would have supported them. But then I realized that we had to game booths, and 3 other wards did 1 game booth each and NONE of them had prizes! Two of them, the football and golf, kept track of who was the best and every half an hour the football booth gave away a bigger prize like a new football. The golf one gave away a new putter at the end of the day to the person who got the most points. STUPID!!!! The other booth was the Strong Man booth, where you take a huge mallet and hit a spot and try to make the little thing go up and ring the bell. It was fun but they didn't get a box of prizes to give out until it was almost over. The 11th ward was the only other ward that did anything and they got the dunking booth. So, they didn't get any kind of money from it either. We did, however, find one last booth way over in front of the museum, not even close to anything else. It was the pan for gold booth. It had minimal prizes. But if you found a piece of gold with a mark on it you got a gold dollar coin. David got the last one they had. That ward went into DEBT with their booth. Last year we also had a ring toss game, a beanbag toss, our wards bounce houses, a cake walk and a couple others. My boys kinda camped out at the football toss trying to get a high score but they only used $5 worth of tickets. I had strangers giving me tickets that they weren't going to used because they weren't going to stick around and keep doing our two booths so their kids could get prizes and they wanted to leave. I was super disappointed. Our ward didn't have ANY entries in the parade plus I had to set up everything so I didn't even get to watch it. Usually we have 3 or 4. Not this year. Other wards pulled out too. It was sad. The wards that did do food booths usually still did a game booth or vice versa. There were no scones, watermelon slices, or ice cream booths at all and everything else you had to pay cash for. So we didn't even get snow cones. It was pathetic. We took our kids to Harmon's after it was over and got them a big snow cone that was 10x better than the ones they had there. Next year we will be OUT OF TOWN that morning. Or our bishop will have to come up with a booth that makes money. I was also disappointed that their were other booths there that we hadn't ever let in before like health insurance booth, make-up selling booth and some guy selling his iron art pieces along with others vendors that were trying to get people's money. It wasn't as kid friendly as it used to be. And all that money use to go directly to the stake. It was a lot of hard work for nothing. I'm done.
Here are the boys with the fish pond. Josh had fun watching the kids faces when they got their prize.
The one thing that I DO love about the 24th is our party at night at the rec center. I almost hesitate to write about it because I don't want anyone else to come to it. I think people think that it will be so crowded that they don't come. I want them to still think that even though it's not true. The WCCC has hardly anyone in it and it is awesome! The favorite thing to do was the water walkers and climbing the ropes. We also had the Funny Face Photo Booth and we all had fun there. The fireworks were amazing and while we were waiting for them to go off we had a dance party. I only got a picture of Evan because my battery died but the DJ was a teacher fron DSU that is friends with Kyle so we kept requesting old 80's dance music. It was awesome. We had so much fun. Next year we'll go somewhere in the morning and celebrate at WCCC with the Wells at night. It was by far the best part of the day!
Here are some of our pictures from the photo booth.
Evan dancing up a storm while waiting for the fireworks!
Last year they tried to have a Stripling Warrior Parade and it kind of bombed. But we did have brother and Sister Holland come down for the event and it was very nice. BUT, the Days of 47 Parade committee from SLC came down and took it over. Which seemed fine at the time. We didn't know that they were going to PERMANENTLY take it over. We are just a humble little town and out stake is the one who puts the carnival on as a fund raiser to help give each ward a little extra money during the up coming year. It has always been great. I never feel bad about buying $20 worth of tickets and letting my kids do whatever they want because I knew that even if they didn't use them all the money still went back to the stake. WELL...the Days of 47 are now taking all the money. It is now a, lets make the stake still do all the work and we'll reap the results. So I was TICKED!!! Still am kinda. Can you tell? We were told that we only needed to do 2 booths. One for the YM and one for the YW so the High Priest and RS not longer had to help out. So that meant one less game from us and the RS didn't have to sell pies or help out with the scone booth. Fine. SO the YW were assigned to do a Pop the Balloon booth and the boys did the Fish Pond. Luckily we already had ha fish pond in our closet at the church so we didn't have to make one or buy one. BUT we did have to but some cork board and a million balloons and darts for our booth. So we start off in the hole right off the bat. When the carnival started I went and bought two $5 passes and told Ben and David to go have fun. They came back 5 minutes later and said they were done and wanted cash to go buy a snow cone or food. I said no because in EVERY year past you could get food with the tickets you bought. Nope not this year. So Nope we weren't going to spend extra $ on food. Which really sucked because had I known I would have bought $1 of tickets and gave them the $. The wards that did food actually got to keep their money. I would have supported them. But then I realized that we had to game booths, and 3 other wards did 1 game booth each and NONE of them had prizes! Two of them, the football and golf, kept track of who was the best and every half an hour the football booth gave away a bigger prize like a new football. The golf one gave away a new putter at the end of the day to the person who got the most points. STUPID!!!! The other booth was the Strong Man booth, where you take a huge mallet and hit a spot and try to make the little thing go up and ring the bell. It was fun but they didn't get a box of prizes to give out until it was almost over. The 11th ward was the only other ward that did anything and they got the dunking booth. So, they didn't get any kind of money from it either. We did, however, find one last booth way over in front of the museum, not even close to anything else. It was the pan for gold booth. It had minimal prizes. But if you found a piece of gold with a mark on it you got a gold dollar coin. David got the last one they had. That ward went into DEBT with their booth. Last year we also had a ring toss game, a beanbag toss, our wards bounce houses, a cake walk and a couple others. My boys kinda camped out at the football toss trying to get a high score but they only used $5 worth of tickets. I had strangers giving me tickets that they weren't going to used because they weren't going to stick around and keep doing our two booths so their kids could get prizes and they wanted to leave. I was super disappointed. Our ward didn't have ANY entries in the parade plus I had to set up everything so I didn't even get to watch it. Usually we have 3 or 4. Not this year. Other wards pulled out too. It was sad. The wards that did do food booths usually still did a game booth or vice versa. There were no scones, watermelon slices, or ice cream booths at all and everything else you had to pay cash for. So we didn't even get snow cones. It was pathetic. We took our kids to Harmon's after it was over and got them a big snow cone that was 10x better than the ones they had there. Next year we will be OUT OF TOWN that morning. Or our bishop will have to come up with a booth that makes money. I was also disappointed that their were other booths there that we hadn't ever let in before like health insurance booth, make-up selling booth and some guy selling his iron art pieces along with others vendors that were trying to get people's money. It wasn't as kid friendly as it used to be. And all that money use to go directly to the stake. It was a lot of hard work for nothing. I'm done.
Ben actually won a medal doing a foot race. The fact that he got a medal instead of a ribbon was the only thing I saw that was better with the Days of 47 in charge.
Here are the boys with the fish pond. Josh had fun watching the kids faces when they got their prize.
Here are Sophie and Paige helping out. The youth are great and had no idea that anything was different. They still volunteered and had fun.
The one thing that I DO love about the 24th is our party at night at the rec center. I almost hesitate to write about it because I don't want anyone else to come to it. I think people think that it will be so crowded that they don't come. I want them to still think that even though it's not true. The WCCC has hardly anyone in it and it is awesome! The favorite thing to do was the water walkers and climbing the ropes. We also had the Funny Face Photo Booth and we all had fun there. The fireworks were amazing and while we were waiting for them to go off we had a dance party. I only got a picture of Evan because my battery died but the DJ was a teacher fron DSU that is friends with Kyle so we kept requesting old 80's dance music. It was awesome. We had so much fun. Next year we'll go somewhere in the morning and celebrate at WCCC with the Wells at night. It was by far the best part of the day!
Here are some of our pictures from the photo booth.
Evan dancing up a storm while waiting for the fireworks!
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