Bonneyville Mill Celebration

We had a fun family outting to the Bonneyville Mill Celebration. It was a small group of us, but grew later as the afternoon went on with two other couples from church. It turned out to be a beautiful day, though a little on the hot side. But we sure enjoyed it!

We arrived there close to the same time as another family from church and had planned to eat a sack lunch before heading to the big event. After lunch was eaten, we walked over the hill and through the woods to where the horses were hitched to wagons for a wagon ride to the mill valley. Everybody loved the wagon ride!

The above picture and the one below are happy moments for my husband. :D The children loved seeing the old tractors and sitting on them, but he loved wandering through all the old tractors and cars. He was especially fond of this CASE somethingorother. I know that isn't really a word, but I really don't know what it was, but I do know how excited he was when requesting for the camera to take a picture of it.

Jonathon would have been happy to have had our day be finished right there, but alas, there was much more fun to be had by me and the children.

This garden was full of the largest dahlias that I have ever seen. What a beautiful garden just outside of the mill. A beautiful setting!

Inside the mill we learned a little about the milling process, but I'm not sure how much we really got out of that part. The children did learn that they used water to make things work. That's second grade terms for you. :)

Some of the group looking out of the mill onto the pick up location where there was a trio of ladies setting up their instruments to play music.

See the worm on Josiah's right arm. A wooly worm. The children all had fun finding him and holding him.

In the children's area they had lots of old fashioned games. We all had fun trying them out and seeing how things worked. Here is Alegra trying her hand at the peg game.

More games/toys. Checkers, some twirly carousel toys, a ladder game (never did figure that one out), the dancing man on the wood board that you sit on, and many others.

Our family enjoying the day. Josiah was hiding behind the toy that the little vegetable would zig zag down, and Benaiah was enjoying the day from the stroller, taking great rides and trying to stay out of the sun.

This is Alegra trying out the stilts. Was a task that did not get completed very well.

And Diella trying her hand at it. Again, not very good at stilt walking. We didn't get any pictures but we also tried the game or toy where you take a metal round piece and push it with a stick to make it keep going. Alegra and I tried it and did pretty well with that. Children in the olden days sure didn't go without fun things to do. They just didn't have video games.

This was a big high light- the corn eating contest. Everybody wanted to join in, but Josiah decided last minute it wasn't for him. He did get to eat his corn though.

Here they all are in action. Good little corn eaters we had, but there was a boy that tore up his corn (not in our group) causing our little eaters not to win. Oh well, they all got a little something for playing along and that was just great!

After getting some cotton candy and kettle corn, we headed up to the old schoolhouse to hear what is called shape note singing. We had never heard this kind of singing before, and found it to be very interesting. Caused my ears to hear and my mind to really think about what I was hearing. If you ever get a chance, it's worth a listen to at least once.

From there we headed back down to the wagon pick up and off we went riding through the woods to the parking lot. The children wanted to stop at the playground to play while us adults were just ready to get out of the sun. Do I even remember having all that energy as a child? Well, all 4 of ours fell asleep on the way home leaving two tired parents to converse about the lovely day. Okay, so those two tired parents fell asleep as soon as we got home, but we had to to be able to function the rest of the evening.

A good day was had. Good fun. Good fellowship. Good fresh air. Good friends! Good field trip.