This afternoon we went to Arma, KS. The town where my Grandpa Grace was born and raised.
Dad went up to his grandparents’ house that they purchased for $540 and knocked on the door. I think that the poor woman who answered the door thought he was crazy but we still took a ton of pictures and videos.
Side note on videos . . . Grandpa has a bad habit of not waiting until I am close before he begins telling stories. Ugh! Don’t you know that I am trying to record all of this for posterity’s sake!
But we ended the journey with the trip to the cemetery to place flowers on Dad’s brother’s grave. We found that his military plaque was completely covered with grass. Luckily I had a large knife in my purse because we had to cut the sod off the foot plaque. Mom, Madie, Ben and I worked hard to uncover it and make it look good again. Madie gets a huge credit because she used her fingers to get between the letters to clean all of the dirt out. We fixed up all of the graves and made them look good again. Ben said that he knew where he was going to get buried, in the empty plot between to his Great Uncle JC and his Great great uncle KK. He said that this was The family place to be buried! It helped that every male relative buried there was in the military and dually marked as so.
Every time in the last 20 years that I have visited this cemetery, it has been on a Sunday and at least 100 degrees. Today the office at the cemetery was open and there was no long searches. We found EVERY relative buried there. We spoke to the secretary about flowers and candles and took care of business. Madie asked when we stepped out of the office if it was her job to bring her children and yellow flowers when we were gone. Such a sweet girl!
Now we are back at the hotel and the kids are swimming while I type all of this on my iPhone! What a different world we live in today!
The Puddles 