The Memorial Day field trip began with a brief civics lesson.

Mama: Faith, do you know what a soldier is?

Faith: Yes.

Mama: A soldier fights to protect us.

Daddy: It’s kind of like a knight. You know what a knight is.

Faith: Do they fight the badguys?

Daddy: Yes.

Mama: And sometimes soldiers die fighting the badguys. And today is a special day we remember the soldiers who died.

Faith: Oh.

Daddy: Hey, want to go pick flowers?

Faith: Yes!

Abby: I want to pick flowers too!

Faith and Abby picked wildflowers, and put them in a shoebox. When we had enough, we took our shoebox of flowers to Oklahoma City’s military museum, on 36th Street and MLK Road.

The whole family came (although Mama and Gilbert did not make it into the photographic record). Here Faith and Abby examine a 37mm gun at the museum, while Bede tries to sneak away wearing only one shoe.

Daddy caught up with Bede and reshod him. Across 36th Street from the museum is Oklahoma City’s Union Soldiers Cemetery, where servicemen from the Civil War and subsequent wars are buried.

Taking their shoebox, Faith and Abby placed flowers on the graves of the soldiers.

They said a prayer thanking God for giving us such brave men to protect our country from the badguys, and asked Him to accept these soldiers into Heaven.

With the last flower placed, they took a little rest. So did Daddy.

We went to the park.

Sean drove us.

The boys don’t look too excited.

Maybe the girls…. huh, no.

Well, everyone will perk up once we eat our pizza.

OK, well I give up. Don’t smile.

Hey who’s drivin this bus? Bede at the wheel!

My goodness what blue eyes you have, Gilbert.

And last but not least your intrepid camerawoman.

Dang Fee, are those size elevens?

UPDATE: It was unseasonably warm, in their defense. Looks like a record high in fact.

We were given this phonics workbook by a neighbor about a year ago. Faith has been working in it since. Sometimes she’ll go a month or more and not want to write in it and sometimes she wants to do ten pages in one afternoon. She especially likes the excercises that involve solving the problem and then coloring something in, lately. (Her Pop-Pop got her the 96-crayon box for her birthday and it’s obviously a big deal to her to be able to choose from about 9 different greens to color in a treetop. Thanks, Pop-Pop!)

I think we’ll order the next book in the series as she approaches the end of this one. She’s about halfway through it now.

Two waxy thumbs up, here!