Memorial Day weekend was a mixture of visiting several cemeteries and putting out flowers and taking a journey down to the lake and having some down time.
My wife Pat and I usually visit four cemeteries, two here in the Shawnee area and two more in Oklahoma City.
We started out by visiting one cemetery east of town Thursday evening and placing flowers there. Our original plan was to head out for the lake on Friday afternoon sometime, then come back Sunday evening and finish placing flowers at two others in Oklahoma City on Monday.
That plan changed though after we placed the flowers early Thursday evening at the one cemetery.
Our good friends Charlotte and Gary Barnett, who we were planning to meet us at the lake late Friday afternoon or early evening, called Pat and suggested we hold up going down until Sunday morning.
That was because of the forecasted thunderstorms late Saturday afternoon and onto into the evening for this area in addition to eastern Oklahoma where our trailers at the lake are located.
After a lengthy conversation between the two wives, we decided that would be the plan and we would just ride down with them early Sunday.
Pat’s office closed early on Friday, so we ventured off to Oklahoma City that afternoon and visited two cemeteries, placing flowers at five grave sites at one and three grave sites at the other.
We came back later that afternoon, rested and went out and grabbed a bite to eat.
Saturday morning I ran and grabbed something and brought it back for our breakfast, since that’s what we would have done if we were already at the lake.
About mid-morning we headed out to a cemetery in Shawnee and placed flowers at four more grave sites.
Then we did some running around and getting a few things for our lake trip before taking a breather and watching for any potential weather that might come our way which it didn’t.
Gary and Charlotte picked us up early Sunday morning and we were lake-bound. Understand we normally do not go to the lake over holiday weekends. Primary reason, it’s so very crowded, even though we’re not on any boats and not on the lake at all.
But this time the four of us had decided it was just time to get away, even if for just a couple of days as it turned out.
We’ve decided that for the most part, we’ll stay away on the holidays. I couldn’t tell you the last time we were down to our lake place over the Memorial Day, July 4 or Labor Day weekend.
We took plenty of food, water and soft drinks. We only ate one meal out and that was on Sunday evening.
Charlotte and Gary cooked up French toast and bacon for breakfast and they brought along some banana nut bread their daughter had made.
The four of us just took it easy, did a couple of things around the trailers that needed attention and relaxed. We had nowhere we had to go and nowhere we had to be at a particular time.
We just enjoyed one another’s company and had a really nice short stay away.