Pioneers and Marmots

For all of you "out-of-Utahers," let me introduce you to a little holiday that we like to celebrate called Pioneer Day. It's the day that the Pioneers came into the valley and started to settle Utah. We get to celebrate it every year with fireworks, parades, rodeos, and yes, marmot killing.

This is Agent 95 (aka documentation specialist)Our team consisted of several members including me, Agent 86-C (aka the Sniper)

And Agent 86 (the Commander) and 92 (the Recon Man) consecutively.

Our mission, put smoke bombs in their holes and hopefully scare them away from our cabin.

Just in case you didn't get that, here it is drawn out for you. The two different window wells were named Alpha and Bravo and listed above is our supplies we had available. (We actually drove back down the mountain to gather more goods).

Thankfully, we never saw the marmot in these holes but we got some great footage (I have about 12 videos and several pictures on my camera) and lots of fun with the fireworks.

To ease our minds of our unsuccessful mission, we went biking...

Found these new little birds...

Spotted this fawn with a sibling and mother ("Run Bambi Run!")

And of course the girls and I made some delicious Bakerella cupcakes. I can't get enough of them.

Well, the following day, we woke up and Preston said, "I'm bored. I don't have any marmots to go after." So...what do we do? He set up a shooting range for us with the BB Gun. We had seven targets to shoot. 1 point if you hit the plate, 3 points if you shot in the object, and (as seen above) if you shot it in the bullseye you got 10 points!

We were serious!

Well, as we were playing, Rob found us a little treat! If you look really close through the lens, there is a little marmot poking his head out of the outhouse chimney. Guess what we were aiming for then?

This little marmot drawing of Preston's just wasn't enough for us.

Grand champion: Rob Wankier! Congrats. You just won your own pack of Sparklers that go out after the first 3 seconds you light them. Today is your special day.


Well, of course you can imagine that after our shooting practice, our minds were turned to something much more important. Take a look!And even though we never DID quite catch that marmot, we think we outsmarted him. Hey at least Hannah enjoyed the sparklers.

Thanks Wankier Family for such a fun weekend.