This weekend, for the first time, we took the kids to the cemetaries where their great grandparents are buried and put flowers on the graves, as a Memorial Day tribute. First we went to Rhinelander (Bill hitched a ride with us, to pick up a car for his new job), and Mom took us over to the cemetary in Woodruff, where Grandma and Grandpa Bayer and Uncle Kenny are buried. We also drove by their old house and around Bayer Lake, where Mom pointed out landmarks of family and friends from her childhood.

We stayed overnight and left Sunday morning. On the way back we stopped at Ladysmith, and found Grandma and Grandpa Bragg's graves, as Dad said, under a bluebird box he set up and monitors. (We peeked, and there was a nest full of baby bluebirds inside).

From Ladysmith we went to Cornell. We had lunch with Jon's parents and then went out to the Cornell cemetary, where all four of Jon's grandparents are buried. That cemetary is very interesting to walk through; it isn't grand or full of beautiful shade trees like the Ladysmith cemetary... it's an open field, basically, by a relatively busy road leading into town. But almost every single grave is still actively tended to by relatives still living in Cornell. There are very few graves that don't have flowers or other tributes for the deceased. Many of them have solar-powered night lights, pinwheels, or wind chimes. Jon knew lots of people in the cemetary... particularly sad were the graves of young people who died in car accidents or killed themselves-- some of them peers of Jon or their children.

We also stopped by Benjamin David Hurlburt's grave... this was Jon's son who died the year before David Benjamin (now 16) was born.

We came home to Eau Claire Sunday afternoon, with good intentions of doing lots of yard work. Instead we lounged around the house and took our canoe out onto Half Moon Lake. We paddled past the Eau Claire Rod & Gun Park, the unromantically-named place where Jon and I were married. Along the way we saw lots of wildlife, including a turtle, a white squirrel, an otter, geese, ducks, and a racoon. Then we let the kids play at Carson Park, and stopped by the Dairy Queen I worked at when I was about Bill's age.

One happy footnote on the computer problem of previous posts: Dell called Jon back to see if the computer problem had been resolved. When he told them that we had finally taken it in to a shop, they said they would reimburse us for the money we spent. Yea!