All Souls Day

I took the boys out to Mt. Angel today to bring flowers to some our our departed relatives as I have done for the past few years. Today was a gorgeous day for it too! Sunny and dry with lots of crisp, fall leaves for crunching.
I decided to have Mt. Angel be our destination this year since I read in a recent Catholic Sentinel article about the new copper roof for the spire of St. Mary's church. Copper roofs are a little dear to my heart these days since the Mt. Tabor house had a copper roof on the tower before it was blown off during the Columbus Day Storm in 1962. I we are able to buy the house, we have plans to restore the tower to its former glory with a proper roof.
There are two cemeteries in Mt. Angel. The smaller, older one in town is the resting place of my Gr. Grandma S's two older brothers who dies as children. I have learned my lesson from past experiences that you need to go there early in the day before they lock the gate and you find yourself having to hope the chain link fence. I had purchased my usual white carnations and lead the boys to the headstones. Things were going okay, not great as the two of them fought over the flowers, the older wanting to use them as swords and the younger wanting to eat them. Finally My Little Helper ran off to explore and I tried to pry the flowers out of the Baby Boy's mouth when I heard a loud BOOM noise. I looked up wondering what that could have been. Then MLH ran back over near me all smiles and I noticed him run up to a nearby headstone and push it over! I was horrified!!! OMG, what am I going to do with this boy?! Why does God think I am equipt to handle not one, but two sons? I'll be honest, I said some things that shouldn't be said in a cemetery, but I was mortified! I had to run around fastening headstones back together. Fortunately for me they had some little rebar, or metal rods sticking out of the ground that I could fit them back on to, mayhaps my son isn't the first to cause so much destruction? In any event, I decided it was time to wrap it up and move on to a more modern cemetery with flat, non-tipable headstones.
But first I drove into the center of town to take a few photos of the shiny new copper roof. So pretty! I hope we can one day spend way too much money for one.Then we headed back out 99E and stopped at the Calvary cemetery where my Gr. Great grandparents are buried as well as 3 of my gr grandma's brothers who lived well into adulthood. Somehow I couldn't find the uncles and their wives today; there is only so much tramping through wet grass with a squirmy baby and a preschooler prone to mischief I can handle. So I contented myself with offering flowers to the Gr. Gr. grandparents. Then we headed back to Portland so I could go to the dentist. Quite the whirlwind of a day!