Veteran's Day

   We're finishing up our study on Veteran's Day and have learned so many interesting things.  We've read great books and visited some pretty cool websites.  We found a wonderful resource at a nearby library, a room full of DVD's that contain interviews of veterans' in our area.  It's a project to preserve history and the one we watched was fantastic!  It was about a young man who became a paratrooper who dropped at Normandy.  He was a prisoner of war two or three times (twice from accidentally going over a hedge and landing IN an enemies machine gun seat!).  His escapes and travels were amazing, scary, funny at times and an eye opener for our kids to realize this is not just a great story, it's real.  It's something that changed this person's life forever, changed our world forever.  We finished our week by calling family members to see how many vets were in our immediate family (not cousins and second cousins but grandparents and aunts and uncles).  They had to ask who served, in which branch and what war if any they were in.  They did it on speaker phone so all of them could hear and completely on their own.  Then they came out of the room gushing with stories to tell.  We made silver stars to represent the 5 they learned about (silver because thankfully none of them died in service, that would mean a gold star) and hung them on a banner in the front room window.

    We'll be calling those who served in our family today and thanking them for all they did.  We'll leave the banner up through Saturday because 3 of the 5 will be here for Hannah's birthday and we want them to see it.  Learning about those in our family who served and what they did made the study much more interesting.  To think,"Hey my uncle was there!", is a pretty cool thought.

  While Memorial Day is about remembering those we lost, Veteran's Day is more about thanking those who served. Take a minute today and thank the vets in your family and say a prayer for those serving right now.  Who knows, one day it might be our sons or daughters being prayed for by others.