Mother's Day and Memorial Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day in France. I was treated to "Bonne fête, Maman, je t'aime!"s throughout the day from both boys (thanks to careful coaching from Frédéric), a bracelet Benjamin made for me at school:

and at church, a rose, a card full of hearts and a song.

We tried to race out of church afterward to get to the American cemetery for the Memorial Day ceremony. We managed more of a slow crawl thanks to all the other people on the road (going where? why? It is not a holiday weekend here!) but once we finally made it out of Paris and onto the highway, we were at last able to drive the speed limit. (Have I mentioned lately how much we loathe Paris??)

We arrived several minutes after the ceremony had already begun. We roasted out there with no shade, though not as much as all the uniformed soldiers! And the Red Cross came around handing out bottles of water.

These guys are members of associations in which they dress up like soldiers from different time periods. They do reenactments and participate in this type of ceremony.

These soldiers fired off the salute.

The flag brigade.

Benjamin, practicing to be a soldier.

Wreaths to honor the dead.

There was a good crowd for a cemetery that is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

They had put an American and a French flag on every grave for Memorial Day.

The American and the French flag fly together.

There are amber waves of grain in France, too.

This little chapel has nothing to do with Memorial Day, but it looks like some place we should go back and take pictures sometime.