Founders Day

Founders Day was on Sunday, August 7th. 118 years ago, a group of people moved here from B.C. Canada to start a new community and gain religious freedom. As natives, they were discouraged from attending chruch. As Christians, they were discouraged from participating in cultural events. That is why we almost lost our culture. The people who originally founded this community were lead to believe that they had to live one way or the other. If they wanted to be a part of this new Christian community, they would have to turn their backs on anything related to their culture. They eventually realized that they could have both and our culture is coming back stronger every year.

Our Founders Day celebrations are similar to our Independence Day celebrations in that we have a parade followed by races and contests. It's always a lot of fun and this time, we had gorgeous weather!

Here's our ferry putting on a show. This ferry is a part of the Alaska Marine Highway fleet, but it only services our community. In the next few years, the road to the northern end of the island will be complete and this ferry will shuttle us back and forth from our island to the next one.

One of my favorite entries in the parade, was the little cheer squad. My little niece Mykayla is the last one in the row closest to the camera. I was so proud of her! She knew all the movements and didn't appear to be the least bit scared.

This is a military brass band. They're small but they sounded great! I love brass bands and this is the first time I've seen one in one of our parades. The town used to have a marching band before I was born. My mom was a member and told me stories of how famous they were and how they'd perform on this huge band stand on the field we have our Founders Day and Independence Day celebrations on.

The contests included foot races, slow bike races, potato sack races, tug-of-war, water balloon toss, egg toss, a jitter-bug contest, three-legged races, a race where you had to put a potato between your knees and hop to the finish line without dropping the potato, a race where you held a spoon in your mouth and used it to carry a marble to the finish line, and even a whistling contest. Here's Theodore just before he caught his balloon. He and his partner placed 1st.

They made too many water balloons so after the contests were over, a huge water fight broke out. It happened right in front of me but I managed to stay dry. It was a lot of fun and a quick way for the participants to cool off. We got up in to the 70's that day.

This is one of my sisters-in-law (in the grey t-shirt). She and Space Cadet got 3rd in their egg toss contest. SC threw the egg too soft so it didn't go far enough.

After all of the events we tried to relax as much as we could and then after dark we took the kids and lit off some small fireworks. The town didn't have a fireworks display this year so everyone did their own. We had a lot of fun until one of them blew up too low to the ground and just missed Lucione. That was our cue to quit.

When all was said and done, it was a great day. SC kept me busy so I didn't have a chance to get too lonesome for Michael.