Memorial Day parade.

Had to explain to the kids why we teared up everytime we said thank you to a veteran who passed by.

Each one represented our Grandfathers' generation  (WW2) or my Fathers' generation (Vietnam and The War on Terror) .

I keep thinking that the kids need to talk to more of the World War 2 vets who will not be living anymore by the time the kids are old enough to realize what they had missed.

I have a memory, but it right on the fringes, and when I try to retrieve exact details I lose it altogether.  It is of my dad and all six of us kids walking behind buildings and warehouses and coming to a strip of land covered in weeds and deserted old box cars and trains.  I remember standing before some of the old steam giants and my father talking about how much even one wheel would weigh.  It felt like an adventure because we had to walk about ten blocks to get there and the railyard was so abandoned.  I could sense that my dad admired the engines and it has stayed with me.  Years later they restored the train yard,  and we often bring the children to see the trains.   I have also done numerous photoshoots here.  We decided on a whim to go to the train yard (I love Steve's whims, I usually say yes before he even finishes, because his whims are always so perfect...

Do you want to go on a bike...YES!

Do you want to go chase some fireworks and see if we can find them...Yes

Do you want to take an old US route instead of the Interstate...Yes!)

This time we also went into the museum and it was perfect timing because one of the steam trains was just then coming  into the round house.

Inside the museum they have so many displays and photographs, I usually make a beeline to the hobo section, where they have signs the hobos would paint on walls and fences to tell other travellers about the place.  The lady who worked at the museum said that an elderly man came to visit and said that he remebered going to his Grandmothers as a child and she always had a cat drawn on her fence and he had not known what it meant until many years later, that it meant "Kind older lady lives inside".

I have three keys on my key chain, one is my house key, the other to the Honda and the third is a key like the one above that was the original key to the house I grew up in.  After the lock broke for good my father put in a modern lock.

Portrait of our family.  Chloe at any minute is going to say something about Eti's hand in her face, and Eti will cock his head and give me his super cute charm to try to distract me. And there are my other boys behind me most likely talking about the history of trains.  Jeff will come to me shortly and tell me some encylcopedic fact that his father told him.

Ring pops from the parade.