4th of July Activities

Last week the Dignity Memorial traveling Vietnam Veterans wall came to Norman. There were big plans to have a ceremony, etc. over the 4th of July weekend. I told Joe I REALLY wanted to go see it. When I went to Washington, DC in 1973 - the wall wasn't invented yet. So, I figured I had better go see it when it came to Norman as I didn't know when I'd ever go to Washington, DC again. We went on Thursday evening about dusk. I personally did not know anyone who was killed in Vietnam, but I do know that Mark (the person I moved to Oklahoma to originally get married to) served in Vietnam and was deeply affected by it. I might add to the point of obsession or post tramatic stress disorder or something. This was one of the entrances on one end.


Looking up at the flags flying on the top of the memorial wall. It was sad to see all the names of the mostly young men (and women) who died defending something they probably didn't understand at the time.
This was like a casket/locker that things that were left on the wall would be sealed inside when the wall moved on to its next destination.

This is the Cleveland County Veterans Memorial. I didn't realize it was at the park. It was built in 2008 and I haven't been to that park since the girls were little enough to push in the swings. It has the names of all the veterans that live in Cleveland County, whether or not they were killed in action.
Friday evening it rained, and Joe and I went to Kay and Randy's house and sat out under their covered back porch and drank frozen margaritas and caught up on our lives. Saturday, it rained again and the forecast wasn't looking so good for the rest of the weekend either. So we just sort of hung out and didn't do much of anything. However, between Joe and I, we broke our printer. I said the heck with it and went a bought a new one at Sam's Club.
And since I'm not such a meticulous housekeeper, I made a dust cover to go over the printer.

When Sunday rolled around, we finally called off our 4th of July boating activities. So instead of sitting around all day again on Sunday, I asked Joe if we could paint the hallways in the house. They hadn't been painted in 15 years. So we went to Home Depot and bought some paint. Joe taped off everything and cut in around the doors. I didn't like the color. Since we had already bought 2 gallons of the paint, we went and bought a 5 gallon bucket, 2 gallons of white paint and a drill attachment (think giant mixer attachment) and lightened the color up. Kristen, Kaitlyn, Joe and I all painted on Monday. And what do you think it did outside? We were waiting for the 70% chance of rain they were predicting and it never came. Oh well, at least we got our hallway painted. Here's a look, it started out Spice Cake and turned into a dark tan. The fun thing is we always paint graffiti on the walls BEFORE we paint it. It's fun and we paint whatever we want, even if it's inappropriate!