"We're going to go WHERE?"

Sunday night we had 4 of our nephews over-we watched a movie and then they slept out on the trampoline. We played monopoly in the morning and had green pancakes and sausage. (fun-fun!) We went to Kam3 beach in Kihei and spent fun times with our old ward friends and family. It was especially nice to meet up with Ashley & Robert Kailipalauili and their 4 beautiful girls. It was like time never passed, except we have to accept that it has, because our oldest daughters are in Y.W.'s or about to be in Y.W.'s (Ahhhhhhh!) Really great to see them! We came home and rested a bit. I was thinkin about how we could better honor what the day was really about, and it came to me that maybe we could go to a cemetary and give someone a lei etc. . .it ended up being our family home evening. We started out by watching this video that the prophet President Monson spoke on called: "Until we Meet Again" http://ldsmediatalk.com/2010/05/28/memorial-day-video/  We had a discussion with the kids about how much they knew about Memorial day. It was pretty tough convincing them to go check out a cemetary (really, really, really tough!!) ha ha! , but once we got there we had some real nice quiet moments. First of all it was a gorgeous evening upcountry, when we got out of the car the kids noticed the U.S. Flags and fresh flowers on some of the tombstones. We kind of made it a game to find all the sites that had Flags on them. We stopped at each one, read each name, their birthday, the date they died, and what they served in-there were a few in World War 2, the Hawaii Infantry, Navy etc. . .the oldest gravesite we found was there since 1904 (they kept pointing out that it was before the Titanic) They found one that was an infants gravesite (died at a month old) and it made them think about our little Betty (I mean Leena), hoping that would never happen. I told them that their Grandpa, (my dad) is to be buried on top of his wife Pattys' grave (she died giving birth to my sister) over on Oahu when his time comes. I watched as they became very thoughtful about the things we talked about, and to realize that these people came from families just like ours. Hope they remember this day when it comes along again, and have a greater appreciation for those that serve our country and protect our freedom.

Kam 3 Beach party-Liz, Leena, Lily and Tehani