Hamburger Anyone???

Our ward/neighborhood has an annual tradition of celebrating Pioneer Day (a Utah state holiday marking the day that the state was first settled by Mormon Pioneers, for those of you non-Utahn's) with a small but big hearted parade, a carnival for the kids, a picnic lunch, cake baking competition, and pie eating contest. It is alot of fun to participate in and the kids have a blast every year. It's always pushing a hundred degrees, but we muster through it and it is always worth it. This year for the bake off, I decided to enter a cute little idea that I saw on someone else's blog....I'm a blog stalker, especially ones that have recipes and baking ideas. It didn't sound hard, just time consuming. So, yesterday, I spent the better part of the day gathering ingredients and supplies and getting most of it ready for assembly this morning. Here's the finished product: Aren't they the cutest??? The "bun" was a cupcake, the "burger" was a brownie, "ketchup, mustard, lettuce" was made out of icing. The top of the burger was sprinkled with a few sesame seeds. The "fries" proved to be the most time consuming: sugar cookie dough rolled out, cut individually, and baked to perfection. Then sprinkled with a little sugar to add the "salt" effect. I had purchased a few cardboard boxes, picnic tissue and large toothpicks from the deli in our local grocery store. Yesterday was a huge pain as I had to do all the baking - but this morning was kind of fun, seeing the finished product left me with a smile....you can just call me Martha, I don't mind at all! You can see the original here: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/2009/06/fast-food-fun.html

Here comes the BIG parade....don't blink...you may miss them!

Here's Em marching in the big parade...pioneer dress, a floppy hat, flip flops and a ukulele....I'm sure that the pioneers had those, right???

After the parade, the kids met at the church pavilion and had carnival games, snow cones (always a huge hit) and an obstacle course. A picnic lunch followed all the activities as well as the cake judging contest....I got 3rd....can you believe that garbage??? All that work and a 3rd place finish! I demand a recount! To make me feel a little better, they did award me a first place paper ribbon for "Best Appearance"...apparently those cute hamburgers didn't taste as good as they looked!

To finish off the day, we had a pie eating contest. There was supposed to be a youth contest, and then an adult contest...somehow when it was time for the adult contest, there was hardly any of the usual participants around....what the heck??? Troy??? Sam??? Alan??? Greg??? Where the heck were you??? Kim has participated a few times and he was sure that this was the year that he could/would win. Since there was no one around, they just skipped over the adults and gave the pies away - I guess he'll have to wait until next year to claim the prize! The last picture does however, show our lovely and not so lady-like Abby participating in it with her friends Kacee and Alex -it was a HUGE mess, and mean old mom made them walk home! It was a fun day for the kids and adults alike - we look forward to it all year. Although next year, I may be boycotting the bake-off....