This Is The Place

NO SCHOOL today!  And no school means no work for me!  I love my job, I work with great kids and ladies, but my favorite perk is that I'm off whenever my kids are off.  I've been looking forward to UEA since Labor Day. Sheila had coupons to This is the Place Heritage Park.  I've never been so I was a little hesitant, because it was my day off from work, I wanted it to be GREAT and I just didn't know what to expect.  But we had a wonderful time and I hope to make it a fall tradition every year.  Dave and Sheila joined us, so that was lucky. 

The kids had fun trick or treating on the streets that were as they were in the early settlement of Utah.  They did some crafts and Gator rode a pony.  We watched a blacksmith work and took a "train ride" around the park.  We toured old homes and learned more of Utah's history.  Davis loves history, and I think one day he will be a historian; he soaks up this kind of stuff.  

 The Brigham Young Farmhouse.  Although he never lived here, he and his family used it for musical performances, square dances and dinner parties.  We toured the home and learned pink, which was the color of the exterior, was a masculine color and blue, the color of the walls in the womens room, was a feminine color. 

I can't even imagine raising my 3 children in a home this size.  And the early settlers did it with 10-12+ children.  And that is after many of their other children had passed away.  They did so without plumbing or electricity.  No freaking way!  How did they do it? 

Salt Lake City's first pioneer burial site was discovered during construction work in 1986. Not all of the remains could be identified on the basis of existing records. The pioneers were reburied here, overlooking the valley they came to settle. The large grave markers represent the adults. The smaller markers represent the children and infants.

 A replica of the Ship Brooklyn,  on this were pioneers who sailed from New York Harbor over 24,000 miles in search of a new home in the West.  I could never have been a pioneer.  I am honestly amazed and humbled by these amazing people.  Right now in Utah Studies (I'm back in 7th grade, with one of my students) we are learning of the pioneers and the saints coming to the west so it was fun to visit this park today and see some of what we've been talking about. 

This granite structure stands sixty feet high and eighty-six feet long. It memorializes, in bronze sculptures, the Mormon pioneers as well as the traders, trappers, explorers, and others who were instrumental in the development of the West. The figures on top are Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Wilford Woodruff, three prominent leaders in the early church. 

Very fun day, and we are off again tomorrow!  I can't wait to play again.