All is Wells: Pioneer Day

Pioneer Day is an official holiday in the state of Utah and is held on July 24. It commemorates when the Mormon Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley after traveling across the plains. This year we celebrated by first going to the Pioneer Day concert in Salt Lake the weekend before the 24th. Every year the Mormon Tabernacle Choir puts on quite a production and invites a guest artist to perform with them. This year it was "The Joy of Song" featuring renowned Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins. We invited Andrew's little sisters Mary and Sally to go with us. It was a great show and we had a fun night.

We're ready to go

In line at the Conference Center

Katherine Jenkins sang beautifully

After the show it was a nice night on Temple square.

Then on the actual Pioneer Day we held Driveway of Fire at Andrew's parents home. This was my second time attending this Well's family tradition and it was a blast...literally. The name "Driveway of Fire" is a play on the "Stadium of Fire," the name of the big concert and fireworks show held in BYU's stadium each year on July 4th. The Wells have set off a few fountains and other little fireworks in their driveway since Andrew was little, but when he and his brothers were teenagers, they started a tradition of a more elaborate show complete with a narrative theme, little paper soldiers that get burned up, and rather dangerous (but legal) explosions. The early years featured a Star Wars-like story of epic battles between good and evil. Last year, we did a re-enactment of the Harry Potter finale where we burnt down a scale model Hogwarts Castle while witches and wizards shot sparks overhead. This year, we did the Battle of the Five Armies from Tolkein's The Hobbit, which we are excited to see as a movie at Christmas time. Andrew and his brother Paul set up the fireworks while the rest of us constructed men, goblins, dwarves, eagles, and elves out of paper to make up the five armies.

The story of the battle: Bilbo the hobbit has enraged the dragon, but also found out its secret weakness--a soft underbelly that the town's local bard will exploit with an arrow. After the dragon destroys most of the town and is killed by the bard, the goblins attack ridding on wolves (tank fireworks in this case). The dwarves, men, and elves fight valiantly, but the goblins burn down the mountain and are about to triumph when the eagles finally arrive and Bilbo starts the rallying cry of "the eagles are coming" that gives everyone hope. Eventually good prevails, but in our version, it is a miracle that everything isn't totally destroyed, and that the audience or Andrew didn't get burned!