Memorial Day 2013

My grandparents on my dad's side are buried together in a little cemetery in a little town called Galveston, Indiana.  For Memorial Day, my sisters and niece and I traveled over and added our own flowers to the ones that were already planted there.  We tried to share with Caida a few of our memories of them--my grandpa died of lung cancer when I was 4 so our memories of him are few indeed...but we enjoyed the day, anyway.

We also tried to teach her how to plant and dig without worrying about getting muddy (she has sensory issues)...

...how to not complain when it's raining on you, but instead draw pictures on the car windows as you wait it out and be thankful that the mud is now a whole lot easier to dig up...

...how to "read headstones" and look around for other family members buried nearby (we have several from my dad's side there--great aunts and uncles, distant cousins, great grandparents, etc.)...

The "they're NOT DEAD YET" tombstone we passed several times, each time getting excited because we'd found a Darland without flowers...and each time laughing at ourselves.  It's not a very big cemetery!

...and how to take care of neglected tombstones and give your extra flowers away, even if they aren't related to you...

We made her clean all the mud and grass out of the lettering with a twig.  This was a 6-month-old boy's grave.  We thought he deserved some flowers.

And this was a 5-year-old girl's grave.  Linda.  My mom's name.  So she definitely deserved some pink flowers and a cleaning, too.

 All in all, it was one of the better Memorial Days I've ever had.  :)