Memorial Day Weekend

Saturday, we met my brother and his family at the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point. It is the best children's museum I've ever been to. When Seth saw his cousin, they held hands throughout the museum. It was so stinking cute. Not to say the other kids don't get along, but Seth and this particular cousin just connect.

When we were all done at the children's museum, I made dinner and then we went to pick up a niece and nephew from Jason's side of the family. Their older sister was having her 16th birthday party, and the younger siblings needed a place to go. All in all, we had 8 kids at our house overnight, and it was AWESOME! The kids had so much fun, as did Jason and I. :) S slept in her bed because she thrives on consistency, but the other 7 kids slept on air mattresses in the living room and had a sleepover. I slept on the couch to supervise, and we had a blast. Root beer floats, candy, popcorn, and How to Train your Dragon 2!

 We played games Sunday morning with my brother and sister-in-law. And went to church in the afternoon. All of our company was gone by then, and the house felt too empty!

Monday we started with breakfast at IHOP. Then the adventures began. We decided to visit both of my sets of grandparents, all of whom have passed away. We went north first to visit my dad's parents.

Then our path took us south to visit my mom's parents.

(We wanted Jason in these pictures with us, but we really didn't want to disturb anyone on this day, so Jason took the pictures for us instead of being in them.)

It was so nice to see how many flowers had been left on all the graves. These people were truly loved in their lives! And it was nice to see the gravestones of other relatives buried nearby also. The crowds were huge, but the people running the place were so organized and helpful that the big crowds weren't a big deal. At one point we were fairly far away from one of the burial places, and a worker gave us a ride on a golf cart. The boys enjoyed that, since just two days previous I had explained to them what a golf cart is.

At one of the cemeteries, we saw a tribute to all the children lost to abortion, and my heart broke for them. I am so grateful that my husband, my children, and I were all giving an opportunity at life, to live and love and learn.

I know this post is really late, but I had to post it anyway. Memorial Day is such an important day, and I am so grateful for having such a wonderful heritage in the military. It takes a brave soul to fight for what they believe in. I hope I have even a little piece of that bravery in me, even though mine will never be manifest in the military.

(One day we will go visit Jason's grandpas and his grandma that has passed on. We did get to visit his grandma that is still alive though for New Year's! Read about that here! His other grandparents are just buried so far away that it makes visiting them difficult.)