A very special Veterans Day

It's kind of appropriate that Veterans Day lands in November. A lot of people use the whole month leading up to Thanksgiving as a way of taking stock of the things for which they are thankful. Growing up as an Army brat, I don't think I've ever taken for granted the people who've served in our military, but it is nice to have a day set aside especially to say thanks.

Well, last week, Molly's school sent home a flyer announcing the upcoming Veterans Day assembly. The school was putting together a slideshow for the assembly and needed people to send in pictures of any relatives who are veterans or who currently serve in the military. Then, it said that they would love for Veterans to come to the assembly to speak.

My dad is retired from the Army now, but still works full time, so he couldn't come. But, my grandpa is retired from the Marines, and I thought maybe he would like to come.

So, I went out to visit him last week to ask him about coming. When Charlotte and I got there, I asked him if he thought he might be able to do it.

"Well, I'm going to a Veteran's luncheon at JCCC, but that's not until noon, so I should be able to come," he replied. Apparently, you gotta book early to fit in the plethora of Veterans Day activities.

Then, I asked him if he had a picture for the slideshow the school was making. "I don't know. It's been 40 years, you know," he told me with a grin. Then, he disappeared for about 20 minutes. Next thing I knew, he was coming downstairs with a big album of pictures. It was this whole treasure trove of history. We looked through it together, and he told me stories about every different picture.

I took a couple pictures of the pictures, but I want to get back out there to get them all copied (with his memories about them). I know, at my age, it's pretty rare to have a grandpa still around, so I felt incredibly  lucky to have the chance to sit next to him on the couch as he shared his memories of receiving a Bronze Star for serving in the forward infantry in Korea, or of being sent to Nagasaki three weeks after the atomic bomb went off in WWII, or the fact that he was smoking cigarettes in some of the pictures because, "they were free. They sent them to us, so we smoked them."

Picture from an article about my Grandpa after he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Memories made at the pumpkin patch

Several weeks ago, we took a family trip to the pumpkin patch. If you know me at all, you know I am a sucker for a good photo-op. I look at a situation and think, "Oooh, I have the perfect scrapbook paper for the page I'm going to make with that picture." I have years of pictures and memories dutifully bound in scrapbooks, sitting on my bookshelf.

If I were to psycho-analyze myself with all the psychological insight earned from years of watching characters go to therapy in tv shows and movies, I might go so far as to say that I love pictures because my own memory is so bad. Seriously. You could fly a fleet of jumbo jets through the holes I have in my childhood memories. Halloween? I remember exactly two costumes. Princess and punk rocker. Two. That's it!

Well, I really hope my own children remember more of their childhoods, and I definitely don't want to forget a minute of it myself, so I try to document every single possible photo-op.

Thus enters the pumpkin patch. If you can imagine, my yearly scrapbooks are not complete without the requisite fall pictures with pumpkins. Now, I'm not saying that I only take the girls to a pumpkin patch in order to get a good picture. I mean, I hope they have fun while we're there, but I also really hope I get some good pictures!