So, Spring Break is coming to an end. Just one weekend between me and my quiet, empty house. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, make it 2 more days with my kids at home, that is.
Yes, it has been yet another break that I did not make it to anywhere sunny. I've gotten lucky a few times, don't get me wrong, I've managed to get myself to Florida for a couple of Spring Breaks. But this is the second year in a row that I have not gone any place south of Virginia and it always makes me a little bitter.
But don't feel too sorry for me because I did take the kids for a couple of days to visit my parents at Smith Mountain Lake where they have recently retired. And this is where we come to what is in my Mother Clucker bag today: a brochure from the National D-Day Memorial ( www.dday.org ) which is located in Bedford, Virginia. Bedford is a tiny little town in Southwestern Virginia that lost more men per capita than any other town in the United States which is why it was chosen to be the spot for this memorial. It is a really beautiful memorial in a gorgeous setting. A very nice man in a VMI baseball hat drove us around in a golf cart and told us all about the memorial. 'Course I was trying to take all of this in while trying to contain Luke "the crazy man", as I like to call him, who is five and who very rarely sits still for anything, much less for an educational information session taking place over a period of about 45 minutes.
I did manage to learn some things about Operation Overlord (see?) so that was cool but the best part of the whole thing is that I have this picture that my Dad took which made me realize that my kids really are growing UP. I did a double take when I realized that my kids were standing flat-footed right next to me, not up on a ledge above me. The weird thing is that instead of them looking taller, I think that I just look shorter and while I AM glad that they are growing (REALLY!), I am NOT happy about "shrinking". It is all about me, isn't it?
