Memorial Day

Today we are busy with the American Legion Post that we belong to.  Since we no longer are running our school, we have time to help out the American Legion.  We went to a meeting in March and the next thing we knew we are involved.

I had the honor of throwing the wreath in the Big Horn River to honor the sailors lost at sea.

We had practice on Saturday morning so that we knew what everyone was doing and knew what the calling of orders were. These changed on Monday anyway. I was a flag holder on the flag line, while Gary was a shooter on the rifle line.  So much for taking pictures.

We held ceremonies in three places, Hardin Cemetary, Big Horn River Bridge and Little Big Horn Battlefield.  Glad the weather held out.

The Commander of our post wanted to make this an event instead of something that we do.  He organized to have bikers come and we did our own version of Rolling Thunder.  We had about 20 bikes (that was great).

Things went off just fine, naturally the order calling didn't go as practiced and we even lost a flag holder somewhere between the Big Horn River Bridge and the Battlefield (not sure where he went).

Since I am the only active woman in the Legion, they had me front and center.  My picture was taken alot, especially at the Battlefield.

It was a good day, the weather held out the only rain we got was on our way back to Hardin from the Battlefield and it was just splash and dash.

We had a chili feed at the fairgrounds for everyone, but somehow that message didn't get passed on to the spectators, so we have alot of chili left over.

We came home with some door prizes, one of the WWII vets won a collage of Harley Davidson gas tanks.  He had no clue what to do with it or even wanted it, so he gave it to me.  Not sure what I will do with it, but will find something for our HOG group.

Jim Eshelman from the Hardin paper was gracious enough to copy off all the photos he took for me at no cost and I even have his permission to get them printed.

Here are some of the photos of us.

At Hardin Cemetary, I'm holding the Montana flag

Gary on the firing line, he is at the very end

Hardin's version of "Rolling Thunder"

Throwing the wreath from Big Horn River Bridge

Flag line at the Battlefield, holding the state flag

Firing line at the top of the hill at the Battlefield

Graduation

This is a very busy weekend for us as it is Brandon's graduation from high school and also all the Memorial Day Weekend stuff we are doing for the American Legion.

Sunday was graduation day for Brandon.  He asked me to take his senior portraits for him, which I was glad to do.  We went out to his aunt and uncle's place along the river.  This would be Ramon & Cecelia Rios.  It was a very nice setting for portraits.  Since these were Brandon's he got to choose what he wanted.  He kept it very simple.

Anyway, back to graduation day.  The ceremony was held at 2:00 pm at the High School Gym.  Gone are the days when parents get a certain amount of tickets and have to figure out which family member doesn't get to go to the ceremony.  Now it is first come first served.

Doors to the school didn't open until 1:00 pm, so we were there early.  We dropped off our contribution for the BBQ at his other grandparents (Chuck & Hilda Kopp) place.  They just live a block from the school.  Got our parking spot then just walked over to the school.

We sat in the bottom section of bleachers at the top, this way we could lean against the wall.  It is first come first served seating.  We could have sat in chairs right up front, but we wanted to save those for parents of the graduating class.  We could see better where we were anyway.  It was hard to get photos as I was bumped all the time by the woman next to me, but I did manage to get a few.

The sound system wasn't the greatest, hard to hear the speakers but at least they kept it short.  The ceremony itself was about 2 hours (not bad).

Once the ceremony was over we then made our way to Chuck &  Hilda's place.  We did manage to find Brandon outside in the line, but again very crowded.  We had a couple other of our students graduate, so we congratulated them also.

It was mostly family at the BBQ, the weather held out(at least it didn't rain).  Brandon's baby sister Mariah had a hard time once she realized that this is real and Brandon is really going to leave for college.  She cried on my shoulder and was down on herself for not spending enough time with her brother.

Brandon will be going to Montana State in Bozeman in the fall.  He wants to major in astrophysics.  He will also be playing drums at college, so we will have to go to Bozeman to see him play.

Here are some of my favorites photos that I took of Brandon for portraits.

Montana Women's Run

Saturday I ran in the Montana Women's Run and finished.  Last year I said I was going to run, but ended up running & walking.  I didn't train as much.  This year I did it.

Getting ready to head to the starting line

Just crossed the finish line, making my way to get the chip off the shoe and get my flower

The Women's Run has two distances a 5 mile and a 2 mile.  My goal is to run the 5 mile when I'm 55.  For now I will just run 2 miles, need to work up to the 5.

My time was 23:18, Overall, I came in 454 out of 4,034.  In my age group 50-54 I came in 25 out of 341.  My pace was 11:39 per mile.  In total there were over 8,000 women entered in the Run this year.

I took off 1 minute and 12 seconds off my time last year.

Last year when I signed up, I made a mistake and marked that I would run it in 20 minutes or less, all this did we let me get towards the front of the pack.  This year I was honest and marked more than 20 minutes.  Lesson learned, mark the faster time.

I figured that once the race started I would eventually get out of the pack.  I never got out of the pack, there were so many women.

We had to wear timing chips on our shoes, so we would get our actual times instead of the clock time.  The difference between my two times was over 3 minutes.  Then it took me a while to get into a run.

Next year I'm going to mark the faster time so that I can get more towards the front.

The weather was very rainy, in fact it was calling for rain in the forecast at racetime.  But it all turned out.  No rain didn't get wet, it was very cloudy but perfect for a race.

Gary managed to get a couple photos of me, one is just before I had to make my way to the start, we were in a coffee shop.  He did find me at the finish, but I had already crossed the line.

He had a hard time finding me.  Too many women wearing blue hats.  It was fun, I still run around town, I worked too hard to get up to this.

My goal is to eventually run around the whole loop in town.  The distance is exactly 3.2 miles which is a 5K race.