"I have a dream"

Maren made this Martin Luther King paper doll at school last week. It has gone everywhere with her since bringing it home. She made a bed for it in her doll house, and has regularly set it up to her dinner table for meals (pancakes made of paper, and such).
Growing up my dad would ALWAYS play Martin Luther Kings' "I have a dream speech on our radio on Martin Luther King day. I imagine most of the time I didn't pay a lot of attention, but I know I did at least a few years, and I remember having a few good conversations with my dad about civil rights and such. My dad was a peaceful person, but a politician at heart and was especially passionate about civil rights. I loved to here him talk about these things and I loved that he shared these things with his family. We also would always visit the graves of family members/friends on memorial day, celebrate the 4th of July and the 24th of July (Pioneer day in Utah), but this was the one "minor" holiday that always stood out to me in our home.
The past few years we have listened to that speech with our own family. It was fun for Maren to be so excited to learn about him this year, she was so proud to hold up her picture while we talked about him after listening to his speech. Something that really stood out to me was the peaceful way he went about his work. It really drove home that fact that you don't have to fly airplanes into buildings or go on a shooting rampage to make change. He accomplished so much with his letters, speeches, and marches. I am so grateful to live in the south now and to see my kids go to school with many different children, although I do wish my dad could come visit and I could see him smile when he see's what a great place it is.

These are the pictures my kids drew of Martin Luther King.

The pink one (Maren's) says "I have a dream speech. We have to change the law." (This is something she heard as we listened to the speech yesterday and notice her writing is really starting to come!). Spencer's is the green one and is fun as it is the first time he has really drawn a circle on his own and he even did some smaller ones inside to be eyes and a mouth. This is supposed to Dr King (as he called him all night). And Amanda's is the white one with some of the speech written in the speech bubble. She listened to the speech in it's entirety yesterday with her dad.