Utah Beach & Saint Mere-Eglise

This was a favorite stop for the kids. After watching so many WW2 movies they were ready to see where the action really happened and the planes and weapons that were actually used.

The church Saint-Mere Eglise is a famous landmark, because one of the parachuters landed on this church and watching his buddies getting killed he played dead, which saved his life.
You can still see one of the bullet holes in one of the paintings inside the church.
Across the street from the church is the Airborne Museum. The museum houses many of the soldiers personal belongings. To see the things they had in their heavy packs-pictures of their family/girlfriends, passports etc. made it very real for our children. It wasn't just a movie now.

Of course the big trucks, tanks and planes were very exciting to see close up.

We're grateful for those who would share their personal things and stories so we can learn about this important day in history.
The highest priority was to obtain a cricket for everyone, and let me tell you they have had a lot of use. We had to restrict them to outside only.
We told the kids to try to imagine it was cold, you had on an extremely heavy pack on and you had to jump into the cold water. Hard to imagine.
The beaches seems so sacred to the children, that they weren't sure how they felt when they saw people swimming there.
Road to see Freedom

Point du Hoc
One of the landmarks that has been left untouched. To see the massive craters left in the earth and the big cement bunkers sure gets your imagination going as to what it was really like on that day.

The boys couldn't get enough of this place. Running and diving from the bombs. They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying so I just had to imagine, but if I were to guess it would have gone something like this.

"Oh man, I've been hit"

"Don't worry brother, I'll get ya"

"It's going to be OK, hang on!"

It's a good thing it has closing hours or I don't think we could have ever convinced them to leave.

Mark surprised us and drove to the German cemetery. I didn't even know it was there, he seems to be good at those kinds of things- knowing where everything is and how to get there. It was a good reminder that we were not the only country who lost loved ones.
I feel lucky we got to walk through time and be up close and personal with all this history.