Gotta Love Pioneers

Pioneer Day comes at a great time during the summer. As the summer begins we have great expectations for the amount of video games or tv the kids are going to get to play/watch. We keep a decent bedtime and have educational activities. But by the time the end of July rolls in, we've pretty much given a lot of that up and it's a free for all. Enter the best Utah holiday - Pioneer Day.

The parade starts at 9 downtown, but we don't have to leave until 9:30 to walk down to the park in time to see the floats come through. Donuts and chocolate milk are the traditional menu items while we watch. We'll then make it back home in time to set out a blanket to reserve our fireworks spot and for a family lunch BBQ. Everyone goes home and we relax until the night when everyone comes back and walk down to watch fireworks.

We love our pioneers around these parts and it makes for the best holiday with friends and family of the year.

Sure, Come On Over, But Use the Driveway

When you go to bed at night one of the things that you take for granted is that a car won't smash into your house. We will no longer take that for granted. At about 2:30am on Sunday morning we (and really I mean Marta - I thought I was dreaming) awoke to a shaking of the house and that terrible car crunching sound. I opened our front door and had a very hard time processing what I was seeing. My next door neighbor's Element was on my porch and this other white SUV on top of our other neighbor's fence.

It probably took 15 minutes to piece together what had happened. A drunk driver who must have been going 50+ mph down our street slammed into our neighbor's car parked in front of their house and the impact and speed pushed it through our front yard and into our porch. His SUV threaded the needle in between our easement tree and mailbox and came to a stop due to the corner fence post. His air bags probably saved his life, and when he left in the ambulance was in some pain, but those on hand thought he'd be ok.

After the cars got pulled away we were able to see how lucky we were in this ordeal. The car missed our support beams for our porch and just took out the railing. That mailbox should have been punted. Marta had just redone our front landscaping, but remarkably, we only lost a few plants. Even my sprinkler heads were spared. Well, I guess I use "lucky" loosely here. Of course the driver doesn't have insurance so we'll probably get to pay for our repairs ourselves not to mention we'll indirectly get to pay for his ambulance ride and hospital stay. I guess this guy should qualify as a job creator.