A Covered Wagon Picnic

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have been reading the series to Landon and Regan for the last few months. We finished up with "The First Four Years" about two weeks ago. A few new series have popped up that are about Rose, Laura's daughter, and Laura's ma, grand-mother, and great-grandmother. Although they weren't written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, we are enjoying them all the same. The kids voted and we decided to read the Rose books first. They were written by Roger Lea MacBride, who is Rose Wilder Lane's heir. So as far as historical fiction goes, I think they're pretty accurate. Maybe more accurate than the original series! (I'll get into that another time!)

Anyway, Regan has had some trouble going to bed at the right time recently. So my mom suggested that I offer her a reward for several nights of good bedtimes. We came up with a covered wagon picnic. She has had several good nights and it was finally not raining today, so we went on our picnic. Regan has short hair now, so we couldn't braid it, but she did wear her sunbonnet and her apron. We didn't make a canvas cover for our wagon, so technically it was only a wagon picnic, but oh well. She insisted on bringing "Jack" along, too. So we all had a character that Regan assigned to us. Regan was Laura, Shelby (the dog) was Jack, Landon was cousin Peter, Lacy was Mary, Rose was (duh!) Rose, Turner was baby Carrie, Carolyn was Caroline, and Cooper was Pa. Regan forgot to give me a character.

We packed some hoe cakes, Johnny cakes, sour milk biscuits, and stewed jack rabbit into our tin pail and headed to the park. Okay, so we really had pb&honey, string cheese and apples, but close, right? :) The trip was uneventful, we walked to the neighborhood park, ate on the blanket, played on the equipment, and when we were totally frozen solid we went home. Regan thought it was wonderful. Here are a few pictures. By the way, the picture of Turner peeing in the puddle didn't turn out too well, so sorry about that. But he was in true pioneer style, after all!