Memorial Weekend . . .

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”

~Joseph Campbell

Isaac asked me on Friday "What is Memorial Day?" and "Why do we Have it?"
My first thought was, 'a day that daddy gets off and so we can have b-b-q's and go swimming!' :-)
I do think that is what most of us think, right? Or it is what we do with any summer Holiday.
I told him that on Memorial day we Honor and think about our family members who have died. We also need to remember all the men and women who have fought and died for our freedom in our Country. That is why we go to Cemetery's and leave flowers or flags. He then started asking about the details of Cemetery's, and the great learning moment kind of got way off track.
Anyways, I am so glad that he wanted to know the real meaning behind the holiday and it made me think about it more too.
I am so very grateful for my ancestors who have passed away. Unfortunately, they are all buried in Utah and out west so we were not able to visit their marking stones. I am also so very grateful for all the men and women who have fought and sacrificed their lives so that I can live in a better country.
Having said that, we did have a fun weekend together as a family.
On Saturday we went to the Fredrick Meijer Gardens and let the kids play in the Children's garden. I totally forgot my camera, I was so mad. So no pictures of the kids having fun there:-)

On Sunday we had the boys go to church in their new shirts from Grandma Wiest, thanks MOM! :-)

We then took the afternoon and went to Grand Haven Beach. This beach is a 40 minute drive from our house. I forget that we are so close to such a great and pretty beach.
This is the Boys watching the boats coming into the harbor.

I took this picture for my dad:-) He loves to take pictures of everything, and does a great job at it to. This is a picture I thought that he would have taken if he was at the beach with us. There were some pretty neat boats coming into the harbor, Seth loved it.

There were a lot of different places to get ice cream on the Pier. We went with the Pier Peddler. It was a great choice! One of the BEST ice cream cones, I have ever had.

Isaac and Seth both got Superman Ice Cream. Andy went with the double scoop waffle, the first scoop was Mackinac fudge swirl the second was Traverse Cherry Chocolate chuck. I went with a one scoop Traverse Cherry Chocolate Chunk. So Yummy!!

Andy and I made a HUGE mistake once we arrived at Grand Haven, after a 40 minute drive we remembered that we didn't bring a stroller for Seth. So we both had to take turns holding/fighting him our whole walk. Lets just say, my arms are a little bit stronger today:-)

Here are some random pictures of us at the beach.

Once we got home we decided to light our fireworks, because it was fore casted to rain on Monday.

I love Seth's reaction of the fireworks. He liked them, well except for the loud ones.

I had the job of lighting the fireworks:-)
After we lit all of our dinky grocery store fireworks, are good friend and neighbor brought over some HUGE Commercial and maybe illegal fireworks. They were amazing and put are fireworks to shame. We then went over to our neighbors home for smores that we made from their fire pit. We had such a great time with them, we are so grateful to have such wonderful neighbors.

Monday morning we all slept in, and it felt sooo good. I then went on a long run, when I got home Andy had made these waffles for us for breakfast. They were so yummy!! If you want the recipe click here: OhiocookingFriends

After breakfast we went swimming at our community pool.
We had fun, but I did realized that Isaac and Seth really NEED swimming lessons.
The rest of Monday we just hung out and got stuff done around the house.

So tomorrow starts the work week.
We really did enjoy the weekend with our dad/husband home with us.