Memorial Day 2013

We are always so blessed to live close to those who have passed on.  Dan and I absolutely love Memorial Day when we get to visit all the graves and spend some time together there.  This year I had taken flowers to my great-grandparents (my Granpa Harmon's parents) graves in Rigby on the 24th and then we went on Saturday May 25th as I was going to be working on Memorial Day.  Knowing that we would need to do some ground work at Dad and Mom's place, we stopped at Kesler's in Blackfoot and picked up a little broom and dustpan.  Dan also asked for an ice cream cone while we were there.  He wasn't feeling very good that day so he sat in the car while I went in.  I saw Ladd and Jane Carter in the store and we had a nice visit for a few minutes.  Afterwards, we went out to the cemetery and got to work.  The grass had grown up around the marble fountation Kelly had set in place.  It was breaking pieces lose so I cleared the ground around it.  I ended up clearing the ground around the whole bench since grass was closing in fast.  Thought it better to just do it then.

 Kelly had made sure they put Mom's death date on the bench.  There was no additional cost for it but it just needed to be done.  Thank you, Kelly.

Afterwards, we went to Pocatello and decorated Granpa and Granma Rohde's spot.  I have such good memeories of them both. 

 When we got to the Thomas Cemetery we found Jo and Dave there.  We had a nice visit, decorated Dan and Lois's as well as Darren Nisson's spot.  We went over to Granpa and Granma's and Aunt Helen's place with flowers, too. 

From there we did Granpa and Granma England's in Moreland.  Dan wasn't feeling good at all by this time so we just hurried home. 

I love Memorial Day and hope the kids will be able to carry on the traditions.  I miss the days they went with us and we would tell stories about our ancestors.  Often they would bring their Book of Remembrances and we'd read the stories straight out of their books.  Many of them were named after some of these great people and it would be nice to keep these memories alive.

I have to say here that there is a new app for Ipod and Smartphones.  You can now take pictures of graves and headstones and upload them for family history research.  Can you imagine?  There may well be Cemetery Missions where little, old couples take their RVs and drive all over the country (world) and take pictures of headstones for genealogy research.  Dates, names, places all downloaded for assessable genealogical information.  How fun would that be??