Memorial Day!

We headed to the beach for Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but were back at our house for most of Sunday and actual Memorial Day. With a houseful of people coming next weekend, we were all about being productive! LOVE. IT. Working around the house is actually fun to me. I'd do it every (well, almost) weekend if I could. I'm a homebody and a busy-body and just LOVE messing around the house. It drives Andrew crazy because I can't just sit still. We took a family trip to Lowes and Academy, which is always fun. A few of our weekend accomplishments included:

-Cleaning out the garage
-Building new shelves in the garage
-Adding legs to a bookshelf and moving it to our room
-Assembling the new IKEA bookshelf
-Laundry
-General cleaning up
-Planting new flowers in the front

Carson also went skinny-dipping in his new pool...


...with Lucy


...and we ended up with this...


Evacuation necessary!!!



Although we are so fortunate to be able to spend this holiday enjoying good food and good times outdoors with our friends and family, we can't forget what Memorial Day is really about. My mom never got to meet her father, 1st Lieutenant John Olin Bates, because he was killed in Korea on June 12, 1952 while my grandmother was pregnant. I never got to meet my grandfather. He was 25 years old.



I don't know who this person is that wrote the poem that is listed on my grandfather's memorial page, but I think he sums it up nicely.

SACRIFICE
By Julien C. Ilyer

"He fell today upon a hill in far Korea and he will not come again unto this land he loved so well, as he had planned.

He fought my fight and gave his all to stem the tide and to forestall the threat to freedoms that I prize.

Pray God that I may realize this sacrifice in this grim war and live life worth his dying for."

So many men and women have paid the ultimate price to protect our freedoms and to try to rid the world of tyranny and evil. THANK YOU to all our brave service men and women, past and present.


GOD BLESS AMERICA!