I Often Go Walking...

One of my favorite primary songs is, "I often go walking, in meadows of clover, and I gather arm fulls, of blossoms of blue..."  And some of my favorite childhood memories include picking wildflowers-especially the Johny Jump-ups in the lower fields- with my grandpa Pugmire.  For Memorial weekend this year I decided to take my kids down and let them pick some flowers to decorate at the cemetery with.  It was a special treat when we were able to get my dad to go with us.  They enjoyed arranging their flowers in jars and then picking out rocks to put in the bottoms of them so they wouldn't tip over.  Then we picked up my mom and made the rounds to St. Charles and Garden City to visit the graves of some of our favorite people, including my grandparents, Cody, Aunt Ada, Uncle Duane and Aunt Geeg, and my great-grandma Pope.  The next day after church we headed to Lewiston with my parents for our annual get together at Steven and Vicki's and visited the cemeteries down there as well.  It's always so much fun to see our aunts, uncles, and cousins down there and buddy and sis loved playing and exploring in their yard with the little cousins.  We were able to go visit the graves of my grandma and grandpa Bodily, aunt Sue and Brandi, and Gram and Gramp (my Wheeler great grandparents).  My mom told them stories about each of them. I wish I would have taken pictures at each of the places instead of just in St. Charles... My kids love going and learning about some of our family history and also checking out some of the other headstones and names of people at each cemetery-especially the babies and the really old graves. Brandt was quick to notice all of the flags at certain graves and quickly assumed that each of those people must have been paratroopers. One of his favorite songs is 1939 by Andy Hackbarth, which talks about a paratrooper in the war. Buddy gets caught up in making sure the flowers on each grave are upright, so sometimes it is hard to get out of there, but it makes me a little proud that my kids are learning that kind of respect for those who have passed on before us.