Memorial Day

Emily has been looking forward to Memorial Day for quite awhile.  She still hasn't quite gotten the name right, though.  It has gone back and forth between "Re-morial Day" and "Meer-mol Day."  Here is a picture of the flag she made.

The kids & I are in NW Iowa for the week.  We started off with the traditional pancake breakfast at the church I grew up in.  Then we headed to the cemetery.  We were glad my Grandpa Vander Kooi was able to make it to the service courtesy of the nursing home shuttle.  He is a WWII POW veteran, so Memorial Day has always meant a lot to our family.  The kids did quite well during the program--including the gun salute.  It was so incredibly windy, though, they weren't able to put up the Avenue of Flags.

Emily was super excited to wear her special new dress.  She had tried on several patriotic dresses, but ended up picking the red & white ladybug dress.  She insisted on wearing her purple frog flip-flops because they had blue in them so she could be red, white and blue.  :o)

While everyone else (including me) took naps after lunch, Emily got to go swim in Uncle Wade & Auntie Abbie's backyard pool.  They just filled it up yesterday, and it was freezing cold, but she loved it and they had to make her get out after an hour.  They found a cool Cozy Coupe float thing at a garage sale.

Later in the afternoon Lincoln had fun shooting baskets with Uncle Wade, playing tractors in the driveway and learning how to share a tee-ball set with Cousin Ryan.  He also got a little too adventurous with the little tricycle down the long driveway!

Emily got to stay up late playing a farm game with Grandpa Boote that resembles Monopoly but uses cows on a dairy farm instead of hotels on real estate.  They kind of made things up as they went. ;o)