Stake Picnic

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Every year, our stake has a picnic sometime during the summer. The stake provides fried chicken and hot dogs,  lemonade and water, and people who come bring chips or a salad or a dessert, and we eat and play games. This year, the stake picnic was last Saturday. 

It was a bright, sunny day - warm, but not really hot. We sliced up a watermelon and then hopped in the car and drove the fifteen or twenty minutes to the church building in Arvada where the picnic has been held the last few years. This church building has a park behind it, with a covered area with lots of picnic tables and a baseball field, complete with bleachers.

Hannah painted Peter to look like a pirate,
complete with hook and crocodile hand.
Shortly after we arrived, a prayer was said and then we piled up our plates with whatever we wanted from the assortment of potato chips, tortilla chips, and corn chips, potato salads, pasta salads, green salads, and fruit salads, fried chicken breasts, drumsticks and wings or hot dogs. We filled plastic cups with lemonade or water, and then our family sat on the bleachers to eat. (Yeah, the picnic tables might have been more comfortable and more social, but we've sat on the bleachers the last couple years and it has sort of become a tradition.) After our plates were emptied, we could either return for more potato salad or chips or whatever, or we could go to the dessert table. The dessert table held a delicious assortment of cookies, brownies, cupcakes and rice krispie treats.

When we had eaten all we wanted, we wandered out to socialize with others we know in the stake. We played  Frisbee and had fun. After most people had finished eating, a couple activities for the younger kids were set up. Hannah got to help with a face painting booth, and there was also a fishing pond where children could "fish" for candies, bubble gum, and small toys. Several were playing soccer, and a lot were just sitting around catching up with friends in the stake they hadn't seen in a while. Eventually people began to trickle away. We gathered up our family and the Frisbee and other things we had brought and headed for home.

The stake picnic is a fun tradition, and something that we look forward to every year.

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