Memorial Day 2023

Memorial Day 2023 - traditionally the start of summer, and you know something?  It wasn't too bad of a day today.  Not too warm at all, for starters.  We did a good bit today, although a lot of it was around the house.  I was exercising for a bit, and then we were off to see Nana for about an hour, the three of us visiting her for Memorial Day.  She was tired, but animated when she got to talk to her brother across the pond.  We've had a lot of visits with her this week, once with her son George too.  We usually change her bedsheets and bring grapes and chocolates and baby oranges, which she eats a lot of. 

Our patriotic tree is up and plugged in, looking nice and shiny.  We've added a few ornaments around Presidents Day, namely a William Howard Taft one and a Chester A. Arthur ornament, which is currently my favorite because of the Tiffany lamp design.  We also found one of these ornaments at Goodwill, in pristine condition - but I already had it. Still, I picked up a second Grover Cleveland ornament, the one where he had a wedding at the White House.  Anyway, the patriotic tree is up and looking nice, and it'll stay up for the summer to add some festive atmosphere to the room.  We had some patriotic music playing too, of course, our usual Phil Driscoll album, plus the Americana one from our visit to EPCOT so many years ago - it's chorus music with plenty of harmony and all a cappella.  

One tradition is the feast on these sorts of weekends, the grilling out and corn and so forth.  I had the grill up and going, cooking up hamburgers and hot dogs, while Mom was preparing corn, potato salad, baked beans, and all the toppings for our meats.  We had the patriotic placemats out, and it was just a nice little meal for us there.

Much later, we were off to get some ice cream and Mom remembered they opened up a new Dairy Queen about eight or nine miles away.  So we went westward to our new Dairy Queen and got ourselves some new flavors - or at least Mom and I did.  Maddie loves the cotton candy Blizzards, and had one of those to go.

Once we got home, we got to work setting up the fire pit again.  Maddie and I struggled to get the fire started this time, as she used up a lot of her AP World History paperwork and we just couldn't get the kindling wood to light up.  Mom had the idea of using pinecones, and the rest is history - we had ourselves a nice fire going, and that was that.  It was a nice time there at the fire pit - Maddie brought her Madlibs along and we did a few of those as we watched the crackling fire blaze, the sun drift down to dusk, and the moon rise over the darkening trees of our back yard.  Very pleasant evening for all.

It was a good day today.  Maddie and I were reading another chapter or two of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and earlier out on the back deck, I was reading a bit and finished up "Feet of Clay," which was a really good entry in the Discworld series.  Maddie was spending a good bit of time in Stardew Valley, and later on we were watching a few episodes of "Ultimate Spider-man" because it was getting later.  We said our prayers, and got to sleep after that - we've got a pretty busy week coming up!