Flashbacks

I am realizing that Memorial Day weekend is a lot bigger deal in my family than in other families. We would always go up to grandma's house over the weekend and Monday morning we would wake up early to cut down flowers (iris, peonies, etc) from the backyard and hall them up to the cemetery, being sure to pick some lilacs that grew along the perimeter. We would go from one family site to another arranging beautiful sprays of fresh flowers and when we were done we would climb a big twisted tree that shades what is now my grandfather's grave site. We would all gather round to get a good laugh at what my great aunt Ruth would bring for us to eat - every year it would be brownies but every year she had some new twist in her recipe. I think I remember carrots being the new add-in one year... I think another she forgot sugar... Then there was great uncle Ralph who would tell groaner jokes and on occasion there would be a bagpipe player in the distance to drone him out, if we were lucky. And I actually miss those days!

Well, we don't do things quite the same way here. I do have a bunch of pictures to share from events from this last weekend and while things didn't go down like they used to back in the day, I still loved it all! After all, it'll be our kids looking back at crazy aunt Jackie who cooked enough meat to feed a small fraternity or silly uncle Neal who got stuck with all the leftovers...

I forgot to post this a few days ago with our temple trip blog but here is Aedan at the fountain near the front entrance. He did get wet and it was a semi-cold day.

We made a fabulous ham for Sunday dinner and used some of the leftovers for our family Memorial Day feast. I made a Penzey's ham and used some freezer raspberry/blackberry jam in place of the Raspberry Enlightenment that is used in the glaze part of the recipe (btw, I would make this again). Aedan had to sample some jam and said, "Mmmm! I like it!"

We had a lot of family over to our place for Memorial Day dinner. We had some great BBQ - we grilled hot dogs for the munchkins, and kabobs and dry rub ribs for us big kids. We are kind of converting to dry rub ribs and I tried two rub recipes from this site although this was by far the favorite recipe. The kids (Aedan with cousin H, A, and M) had fun at their table....

... while the adults had fun at theirs! I can't believe how big our family is getting!

Cousin A and M are loads of fun!

We had many other fabulous contributions to the dinner (thank you everyone!) and for dessert we had ice cream treats. I am so glad the weather allowed us to have this outdoors because Aedan was gooey with chocolate fudgesicle from head to toe (literally).

The other day cousin A came to visit and the two of them had some fun times playing!