Pioneer Day in California

According to the date/time on the email this announcement went out at 10:35 pm Friday evening, July 17:

Saturday, 18 July 2009
Pioneer Day Celebration
8:30 AM - 11:30 AM

The Carmichael Stake invites you to a Pioneer Day Celebration at the Fair Oaks Park (corner of Madison and Fair Oaks behind the Fair Oaks Library), 8:30-11am. 11549 Fair Oaks Blvd., Fair Oaks, CA 95628.

Pancake breakfast served from 8:30-10am. Flag ceremony - primary games - snow cones - live music. Bring your families and chairs or blankets (table seating is limited.) If you'd like to join the band, bring along your string instrument.

Now, even if we ignore the fact that many people just aren't up at that hour to read their e-mail, it's possible that most people got up after that message was delivered, looked at their watches and said, "oops, missed that one I guess." That may account for the low turnout from our ward but probably not. There were announcements in every meeting and assignments were accepted by almost 20 people in our ward. They all made it out. I think that says something about activity & involvement.

Carolyn wanted to be sure she was ahead of the curve so we actually ended up at the Fair Oaks Park before 8:00. There, with the help of 1 and then 2, and then 3, 4, and 5 of our serving crew we first moved the serving tables to a more shady spot. Then we spread out the food trays in a more logical food serving. Carolyn tried to get all the servers to eat first before the line opened so they could concentrate better.


We had the Sacramento Fire Department Incident Support Unit on site cooking the pancakes, eggs, and bacon for our breakfast.


The rest of the breakfast (grapes, bananas, watermelon) was prepared in an adjacent sun shade by another ward.

Then it was all put together on the serving line which was the responsibility of the La Sierra Ward, specifically the activities committee.
All of the volunteer staff from our ward atteneded. In fact, they were 95% of the people our ward attending.

We had invited our kids and grandkids who made it just in time to be fed and to pick up one snow cone. All the games and activities were closed or closing by the time they arrived even though the invitation seems to indicate there would be another hour.