Pioneer Day, 2012-14

A few years ago, I made a post about Pioneer Day, so I'm going to remember those that have happened since that time.

2014. In the morning I wanted to pick apricots so my mom could make something with them. Nathaniel wanted to help me, so I went out with him and he climbed on top of our swingset to reach the fruit. I put my arm around him, and he kept saying, "I got it! Wet [let] go!" Of course I didn't; I  told him I would be very sad if he fell down. I came in with the colander full of apricots and said to my mom that some of them were a little green, winking that Nathaniel had picked some that weren't quite ripe. Preston said, "Did Baby pick them?" Nathaniel said, "I didn't know!" (Indeed, Preston had picked plenty of green ones himself the year before at the age of eight.) Then we went to a McDonald's in Salt Lake since the boys all like it for some reason. Franklin put his chicken nugget on his straw, and Preston followed suit, and they drank soda while eating nuggets. Preston said they should make nugget-flavored soda.

Then we went to the mall to go to the Lego Store. Nathaniel didn't bring shoes, so he had to wear Allie's girly shoes, which he wasn't too happy about. I carried him across the parking lot, and while I was doing so I asked him who was cuter, me or his dad, and he said me, because I was younger even though I had bigger legs. [I just asked him in 2015. He said, "That's a hard choice....It's too complicated. I think you because you're not as old as my dad."] We went to the Lego store, where there were bins where they could fill cups with Legos. He didn't like to get Legos from bins with Disney Princess covers, so he didn't get white flowers, but he got purple and pink flowers, since they weren't in Princess covers. There were some orange Legos with a Princess cover (Allie said, "The orange could be for the pumpkin carriage," and my mom said the covers probably didn't necessarily mean anything to do with princesses), so Nathaniel didn't get the orange ones, but he loved to get some clear ones, even though they did come from a Princess cover. Ya-ping tried to fit more Legos in Preston's cup by shaking the contents of one cup into another. I could have told her it wouldn't work, and indeed it made it worse. As she was doing that, David said, "This is where Preston gets it." David wanted to see whether Nathaniel wanted to fill up a cup or get a cheap set, and he wanted both, causing David to say, "That's not an option." Then we went to Chinese Gourmet to meet my grandparents for dinner. While we were waiting, we tried to get Ya-ping's niece to speak English, but she was too shy to do so. Susanne said she didn't know she could speak English. At the restaurant, it was the first time I ever had Mongolian barbecue. We came home and David's high school friend Preston Hawkes, for whom David's Preston was named, came over. I had been in my room playing on the Super Nintendo but I went out and gave him an update on what I was doing in life. Nathaniel loved talking to this big Preston; he was telling him he knew Chinese, but Preston thought he was talking about his knees. David said that Nathaniel was by far their easiest four-year-old. I asked Nathaniel to tell Preston how many moms he had; he didn't respond, but Preston said, "That's a lot. Anything more than one is a lot." David said that one day he just started talking about his new mom, which made Ya-ping ask David why he said that. They talked about their crazy friend Mike Bishop, and Preston said he was still Facebook friends with Mike's ex-wife. Preston talked about his younger brother being a jerk in public without knowing it, and he said he (Preston) didn't usually like to swear but he called someone a bad name. He said he would have to visit David when he was with his son, and David said they could take them to the Exploratorium. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today I picked apricots and Nathaniel helped me. Then we all went to McDonald's and then to the Lego store. We went to dinner with G'ma and G'pa. Tonight big Preston came and visited. I'm going to miss those kids."

2013. I think it was a little boring, so I made a blog post about pioneers. (I could write a much better blog today.) That night I went running, and when I got back a bunch of people were lighting sparklers, so they invited me to do so too. We got on the apartment staircase to take pictures. (I found a picture, but I feel weird stealing someone else's picture.)

2012. I made this Facebook status: "I've never really thought of Pioneer Day as much of a holiday. However, I am grateful for my pioneer ancestors who went through such hardships and sacrificed so much, working 'with might for a cause that's right' to establish this great state of Utah." I spent the day looking at words in Isaiah in the Oxford English Dictionary and writing a paper about it for my Isaiah class. I hadn't been running in a while because I had knee problems, but I went that night, and as I was up on campus in front of the testing center, I looked out over Provo and saw aerial fireworks. Then I went home and drank Powerade.