I Love Memorial Day

Growing up my family always celebrated Memorial Day, and I have fond memories of it. We'd go to the Paris and Bloomington cemeteries and put flowers on all our ancestors graves and then have a big picnic at my grandma's. But after leaving home Memorial Day just wasn't the same. I didn't know if it was not having family around to celebrate with, marrying someone who didn't have Memorial Day traditions, or what exactly. Then I moved to Utah and realized that everyone here celebrates like I'm used to. I guess it's a Mormon thing. We honor our ancestors, while the rest of the country seems to treat it as a second Veteran's Day. I never got that.

This year Brandon was trying hard to make the holiday special for me and he offered to take us down to the Bingham cemetery where he has some relatives buried. I was excited at first, but then I decided it probably wasn't worth it. It wouldn't be the same without Grams telling us stories about everyone buried there, and I didn't have enough time to prepare something that we could teach our kids. That's my goal for next year. Instead, we decided to just do some fun things.

We started out by having breakfast out on the patio. Brandon got out his little stove and cooked pancakes for us. You may notice Sophie's plate with a waffle. She made her own, but the rest of us did have pancakes (I'm not confused). And if you really study this picture you'll also see how our house is rotting away. Oh how fun these projects are! It's never as simple as we hope, and I think we'd be much happier just living in our rotting house if we could be ignorant to the fact and just ignore it.


Then for lunch we threw together a picnic and took it to one of my favorite parks. As we were making lunch, Chloe burst into singing "God Bless the USA." I joined her, and then Brandon says, "I wish Lark was here." I'm not sure if he was just really missing her, or if he was hoping to see her sing along with us. So, off to the park we went and on our way we passed the Farmington Cemetery. What a beautiful sight that was! That's the Memorial Day I remember. Love, love, loved it!



We ate, played at the park, hiked around, and just had a great time together. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Beautiful day. We worked on the deck a tiny bit and then had FHE, which required going to another park in town and playing some crazy "tennis ball" game Chloe invented. It was a fun day with a fun little family.