Decorating for Memorial weekend...

Mom's birthday was last Saturday. She wanted us to meet for lunch and decorate the graves.She does this every year. She brings a huge screwdriver and a hammer, plus several bouquets of artificial flowers. I was going to say "fake" but artificial sounds nicer.
She takes the screwdriver and pounds it into the ground to make a small hole and then places the flowers in it for some colorful decoration. We all just stand there and watch. She has it down to an art form....we are still learning.

I did think to put the little LOVE quilt on grandma and grandpa's grave. It didn't stay like the flowers, but it made for a nice picture. Over to Jodi and Joan's grave........I can't believe it has been 5 years since Jodi died because of breast cancer. Joan was just an infant and also Jane's twin.
At the Kaiser Hauf where we were eating lunch, Jenny pulls out 3 little gargoyles she had bought at a garage sale for a dollar. She wanted to leave them on Jodi's grave since she loved gargoyles. We convinced her not to just leave them...they would be stolen.......or just cut up into many small pieces when the lawn mowers came through.
We talked about burying them along side the grave........Jill liked that idea.

But in the end Jenny decided to set them on the grave and then take them home for her garden. We took their picture. I'm thinking that our decorating is a little different from Mom's.

Jill still liked the idea of leaving one and offered to buy one of the gargoyles. She didn't want to give up on burying one of them. Unfortunately the price of a gargoyle had gone up to 10 bucks a piece .........

and Jill agreed with all of us that the gargoyles would look lovely among Jenny's flowers at home.

Here we all are at Jodi and Joan's grave. Jenny, Jane, Mom, me,Jill. This where we learned about
"THE SIGN"
Jill and Jon had found it a few years ago.........
If you stand like we are and look into the distance a cross shape is formed ...I don't know what the horizontal and vertical poles are exactly.....but there is a cross, plain as day. I wish I had taken a picture.

If you look behind the cross you see a shopping center.........and wouldn't ya know the cross is directly on the door of a liquor store.

Jill KNEW this meant Jodi was showing her where to go purchase some beer for the evening since they were spending the night. Jill is very good at finding "signs"......she has this down to an art form....the rest of us are still learning.



A trip to the cemetery isn't complete until we go see Allie Peterson (no relation).....he was a little boy who died in the 1800's....Grandpa always told us he had drowned, I can't verify this but it is the story we were told.....

I love his outfit and was always in awe of how BIG this little boy's grave was.
His feet are at my eye level now....but when I was little that statue was WAY up and very big. We noticed people were leaving pennies at his feet on the statue and we decided to leave a couple pennies too.

Happy birthday Mom it was a nice afternoon!!!