Memorial Day Traditions

Ryan’s family has an awesome Memorial Day tradition and we were lucky enough to be here to be a part of it this year. Our day went a little like this:

At 10am, we headed over to the cemetery to clean up the Bedke lot. We weeded and raked and left flowers and raked again. It was a lot of fun and the final product {the top left picture} looked awesome. Really…you should have seen the “before”.

 

While we were working hard, Harper napped a little and watched us from in the car:

She was so perfect all day. She hardly made a peep until our last cemetery visit at about 7pm {and rightfully so}.

After we cleaned the lot, we walked around the cemetery. Ryan’s parents and grandma told stories of and our relationship to the different people who were buried there. I’ve decided that we really are related to everyone in town!

After the cemetery tour, we headed to Grandmas for yummy bbq’d burgers. There’s seriously nothing like lunch/dinner at Grandma's house!

At about 4pm we headed out to visit 3 other cemeteries in town. We walked and/or drove around and continued to hear stories of everyone. It was fun to make connections and look at birth/death dates and imagine up stories of people we never knew. It was seriously just so cool!

Harper loved sitting up front with Grandpa and honking the horn while daddy loaded the car.

This is the “hidden” cemetery that none of us had been to before. It’s in the middle of a field and very random. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d miss it! It was really neat though. There were a lot of really old headstones.

It was a loooong, but very fun day. I loved learning more about the family roots and the people from this community. We seriously live in the best place in the world!

I’m excited for a repeat next year.