Memorial Day 2011

We always spend Memorial Day or some part of a day leading up to Memorial Day decorating graves.  We make arrangements of fresh cut flowers intermingled with a few store bought bouquets.  It's a neat thing to do and it's nice to spend time with my grandma.  This year the rain was so bad and the forecast was looking even worse, so we decided to fit our decorating in between storms.  Saturday, we gathered up the flowers, my kids, grandma, and my mom and headed to the Huntsville cemetery.  As soon as we got to the cemetery, the wind started to blow and it was apparent that the rain was on it's way.  We hurried to get the flowers arranged.  We decided it was best to do the arranging in the back of my car where we would have some cover if it did start raining.

While we were busy, my girls had a great time running around.  We have to always remind the kids that it is disrespectful to step on the headstones and that knocking over the flowers is a bad idea.

I love this next picture!  It's my kids with my grandma and her sister, their great-great-aunt Joyce.  We always decorate the graves with her in Huntsville.

The funniest thing happened while we were placing the flowers on the graves.  We always dig holes in the ground for the flowers to keep them from falling over. While anyone was digging the holes Abby was saying, "Don't dig too deep!  You'll hit the bones!"  It was really funny.  She also ran up to me and said, "Mom, there are FIVE (with her little hand in the air showing five fingers) people under there."

She was so concerned about what was under the ground.  Whenever we go to the cemetery we always have to talk about my grandpa, Abby's great-grandpa.  She remembers him a bit and always says how much she loved him and that he misses her.  She did tell me while we were on our way to the cemetery that she was going to dig up grandpa so she could give him a hug. It's always a nice experience, rain or not to participate in this activity.  I hope that we can always keep this tradition alive.