Gravesighting . . .

Memorial Day . . . . hmmmm. We go gravesighting every year on Sunday (as to not ruin the real holiday). It's like sight seeing, only you're just looking at graves. We've done it forever. We used to come to Utah on vacation and go gravesighting with my Grandma Watkins. Ryan and I would try to pretend we magically fell asleep at every stop, but it never worked. Ryan says that the best thing about living in Ohio is that he doesn't know anyone in the ground. We always have a review of family heritage and history and then there's a quiz to follow.

Anyway, this year the dutiful daughter (me) and dutiful son (Jeffrey) went. Ansen volunteered to stay home with the sleeping Olivia (plus is was the Indi 500). We gave Addison the choice to stay home with Ansen and take a nap or come with me and Banna for a little drive and a picnic at the park (oh, I mean a long, long drive, looking at gravestones, listening to family genealogy/history and then eventually a small picnic in the trunk of the car in the middle of a graveyard while it started to rain). She unsuspectingly picked the latter.

We always only see the Watkins side (dad's side) and so this year my mom strongly requested to see the Sharp side which is a little bit longer drive to Vernon and St. John. As usual we found some fun. We made up a new game where you scream out the window at animals hoping to scare them as we drive by (we had lots of success) and then laugh. It evolved from Jeff and I being car sick and needing the windows down into quite the entertainment. We also learned some new words from the local we got directions from . . . Take a horse-shoe (U-turn), and a Dog leg (just a turn).

Here's some pictures, mostly for my extended family in case they're interested. We went to both the houses that my Grandma and Grandpa Sharp grew up in. Someone still lives in my Grandpa's and my Grandma's they've built a new house in front of it that a distant family member still lives in.

Grandpa Sharp's House-Vernon

Grandma Sharp's House-St. John

This is the Ajax grave sight in St. John. It's actually Grandpa's family, but was buried by Grandma's house. She said that growing up they always wondered who this sad Ajax guy was with no family. Then she married into the family of him. It's the Ajax that owned the store that eventually burned down.

Here's what Jeff and I thought was creepy. In the St. John cemetery there are mounds of dirt where the casket was buried. We're used to the flat, grass park-like cemeteries, so we found this cemetery "interesting."