The Fifth Wheelers: Memorial Day 2013

Well, as Memorial day is the unofficial start of summer, I gave in and gave my boys their summertime haircuts. Here's the best before picture I could get of B. He was very upset and didn't want to get his haircut.

And here is the after picture- I call him my little Jar-Head. Also- I don't know what's up with my boys eyes....you'll understand when you see the rest of the pictures.

J's before picture....

.....and After.

We picked some flowers from our backyard and took them to the Murray Cemetery where my mother's parents are buried. We hope to make it a family tradition to visit the graves of our grandparents (and great-grandparents) on Memorial day. We will have to plan next year, we have plenty of places to choose from, the Ponds in Provo, the Wheelers in Ogden and Grandpa Turner in Logan- We want our boys to remember the sacrifices made by our ancestors and we hope that this Memorial Day tradition will help them understand and remember the wonderful people from whom they descend.

So this year, we visited Grandma and Grandpa Dowdle, a wonderful couple who were married in 1944. Grandpa Wayne was an Idaho boy who became sailor in the Navy during World War II. While he was stationed in Florida he met Mildred Gulledge, the most lovely waitress in all of Daytona Beach. My Mommy was their first child and I am grateful to have been blessed to be part of their family. Grandma passed away the fall of my Senior year of High School and Grandpa passed just a few months after our little B was born. I miss them, but I know they are our Angels and that they are around when we need them. And even more importantly, I know that we will all be together again someday.

I was able to explain to J that not only were Grandma and Grandpa Dowdle buried here in Murray, but my cousin Matt, who passed away while I was on my mission, is buried there as well. This kind of confused J a little, he knows he has cousins and that they are pretty much the same age as him. I don't think it's ever crossed his mind that sometimes people don't live to be 95 year old or older, like his Great Grandma Turner is (I've told her that she's not allowed to die, and so far she has been very obedient to me, but that is a story for a different time). It was nice to be able to visit the cemetery with the boys.

Ken had the fabulous idea to take the boys to a park on Memorial Day as well and since we were in Murray we wen to the very large Murray Park! The boys enjoyed running on the paved trails while we tried to find a playground.

B was brave and let me help him hang from the Monkey bars, after about 20 seconds he started asking for help to get down. We tired to get J to play on the monkey bars but they were really short and he could stand on the ground while he moved his hands and he didn't understand why we wanted him to lift his legs up off the ground.

I don't know if its a large creek or a small river, but the water was high and my boys enjoyed freaking me out by getting a little too close to the water at times. In actuality, they never got very close at all, but that didn't stop me from having visions of one of them falling in the rushing water and me jumping in and trying to save them. SO, I'm glad that part of our park adventure ended quickly.

I really love this picture. B often gives up on walking, and we were walking a lot that day so it was perfectly understandable when he got in front of his daddy and said "Hold Me!" So Ken tossed him up on his shoulders and B really enjoyed the view from up there.

Ken challenged the boys to run up a hill- it's actually quite steep, not sure if the picture does it justice. J ran right up that thing like it was nothing.