Mr. Z's birthday

Mr. Z passed away on August 11th.  It was a shock and something we were not expecting.  His birthday is in September.  He always had a big birthday party--Christmas in September.  We went last year.  We didn't want his birthday this year to pass without doing something to remember him.  Jason had a tradition of remembering someone by writing on a helium balloon, and having a moment of silence while you let it go.  His birthday was on a Sunday, and we didn't have a tank of helium around, so I came up with an alternate way to remember him.  We did a message to Mr. Z in a bottle. :)  We took a drive out to the river, and each took a few minutes to write Mr. Z a note.

I was pretty impressed that Eli wrote his own name without help "...E...l....i!"  He was pretty proud of himself.

John wrote a message for us and taped it inside the jar that would hopefully help the jar on it's journey.  Then, when our notes were written, we placed them in the jar.

Melinda took our picture. 

Then, we took one with her in it as well. :)

We headed down the slope to the riverbank.  We sang "happy birthday" to Mr. Z, then John threw our bottle of notes into the river.  We had our moment of silence as we watched the jar float away. 

 

Ian had the hardest time with Mr. Z's passing.  He cried as we wrote our notes, and then watched the jar in the river until he couldn't see it anymore.

Mr. Z is already greatly missed.  We had many, many adventures with him.  We hope his jar of notes has it's own great adventure on it's journey to the ocean.