Memorial Day, honor, sewing & food 2012

Memorial Day is a big deal in our town.  Lots of patriotism around here!  Every year we bring our lawn chairs, sunscreen and sunglasses and attend the local Memorial Day service at our cemetery.  The whole thing starts with a parade up town, but we've never attended the parade.  Our main goal is typically to grab a choice spot for our lawn chairs at the cemetery.  The middle school marching band always plays for this service and my two oldest have had their spot in the blistering heat.  Next year Meri gets to enjoy it!

But this year was a little different.  Maddy has been selected to attend Girls State in a few weeks and since she is the selectee of our town, she was asked to read the poem In Flanders Fields for the Memorial Day service.  Cool!

Just before the service started, a helicopter came in for a landing to deliver the key note speaker.  Too bad the field behind had just been plowed.  LOTS of dirt got kicked up and it was such a breezy day anyway...  The speaker was a Brigadier General who had grown up in our town and reminisced about scouring the ground after the Memorial Day services for left behind empty shot gun shells!  My kids used to do that too!  Every once in a while one crops up around our house.  Usually in the utility drawer.

Maddy did a great job reciting the poem!  I'll stick it on Facebook later.  Check out her skirt!  That's the one that I made from this tutorial.  You can't see it REALLY well in this picture, but it blows in the wind nicely during the video of her recitation.

A BIG Thank you to all the U.S. veterans past and present!

After the program was over, everyone found the bricks with their Vet loved ones in the newly paved areas and then lots of folks went over to get a close up look of the helicopter.  While we were preparing lunch, we heard it take off and managed to catch a glimpse of it between some trees.

 

We had a few friends over for lunch which consisted of the usual Memorial Day feast at our house.

Pork & Peach grilled kabobs
Vegetables grilled
Calico beans
Corn on the cob

and topping it all off is the Famous Daves recipe of Drunken Peach Cobbler.  Oh how I wish we could have that all year long!  I guess we could, but then it wouldn't be as special I guess...

 

As for sewing, I got a LOT done!  80% on the dress and it's turning out so cute!  100% on another professional looking skirt.  60% on a tank top that Maddy decided wasn't professional looking enough so it will get finished AFTER the Girls State stuff gets done.  And then Maddy found a tutorial for a scarf top which I'm making out of just two big squares of fabric that I"ll have to hem because they didn't start out as scarves.  No big!

Anyway.  I'll show you those items "hopefully" tomorrow.

 The rest of the day we moved our bucketful of puppies to the yard and let Meri and guests play with them while I cleaned up their garage area.  Then I sewed. sewed. sewed...  Taking a short break to go up to the ice water town pool with Tiffany, Meri and Leon.  I don't think the pool heater did a very good job yet on warming up that water yet...  Let's give it a couple more weeks, huh?  brrrr....  Then back to more sewing and socks.

How did you spend Memorial Day?