Monday, 9/30/13

Happy Monday! Our class went on the field trip to Usher Park today for the VFW's flag retirement ceremony. I wanted to share the pictures I'd taken with you, but I'm struggling to get them to arrange in any sort of order. Sorry for the messiness. Don't you just love how beautiful Usher Park is, particularly the portion that honors the veterans? I wanted to be sure and capture it for you to see.  And perhaps in the dead of winter we can remember to look back at this gorgeous day and feel a little warmth from it.

The field trip was a completely success. The kids did an amazing job of walking politely and staying off of the lawns. When we arrived, they noticed that the fire trucks and ambulance were parked on the street. Initially they were concerned, but I explained how the firefighters and EMTs were there for the ceremony just as we were, but they have to travel together in their trucks in case there were to be an emergency. Ironically enough, right as we were leaving, everyone's sirens went on and they were off to take care of someone somewhere. Thank goodness for them!!!

The ceremony itself was beautiful! The veterans took turns teaching the kids things varying from the history of our flag, to explaining our Pledge of Allegiance, to the meaning behind each fold of the properly folded flag. It's an odd thing to explain to kids that the flag is burned when the time has come for its retirement; the best I can do to make it make sense is to explain that it's better to have it return to ashes than to have it be tossed into a garbage can. That explanation seems to suffice, thank goodness! Check out the perfect morning we had:

 I'm not going to mention the Bears game, except to say that at least they seemed to regroup and put themselves together a bit better in the second half. They may not have won, but they didn't go down without a fight. There's definitely a lesson in there. Thank goodness there's always next week.....