Mer-di-wif's Birthday

I love that my kids look forward to Merideth's birthday.  Ever since we turned the calendar to July, they have been reminding me that we'll be going to the cemetery and getting ice cream. 

As we walked to the cemetery, the kids ran ahead to find the headstone and were proudly sitting on it when Aaron and I caught up.  Christian (almost 5) is beginning to read.  As he looked at the headstone he recognized our last name.  He called out to me, "Mom, it has our name because Merideth is part of our family!"  Throughout the evening Christian would also excitedly run to the headstone and shout, "Hi, Big Sister!" I love that even though he hasn't met Merideth, she is real to him.  It is especially impressive to me for him to recognize that she was born before him and would be older, since he has only seen pictures of a baby.  

 Kimberly (almost 3) is absolutely darling when she says "Mer-di-wif" or "Mer-di-reth."  I wish I could capture that, but I know she will soon outgrow it.  She also made a point to tell me that she was looking at Merideth's picture in the kitchen that morning.

As we walked around the cemetery, I pointed out that many of the headstones had pictures of temples etched in them.  I'm not sure the kids were listening at that point, but sometime we'll discuss further what it means to be sealed in the temple to have families together for eternity.

Of course, the next stop was getting ice cream.  It seems to have become a tradition for the kids to choose the "birthday cake" flavor--definitely not my choice, but for them there is no other option for this occasion.