Hey, Friends! We're taking it easy for this extended Memorial Day holiday weekend, and hope you are too.

Mike's visiting Indianapolis for the Indy 500 race weekend (congrats to both T1D drivers, Charlie Kimball and Conor Daly for their "racing with diabetes" accomplishments there) and spending time with friends and family. Meanwhile, Amy is enjoying time with her husband, three teenage daughters and good friends in some seriously beautiful Northern California countryside for the weekend.

While this holiday is dedicated to remembering those who gave their lives to serve America, we couldn't help but stretch this a bit to think of someone important in our own D-Community who certainly "gave his all" in everything in life, including years of military service -- not to mention initiating the discovery of insulin in the 1920s, among other things.

Yep, we're talking about Dr. Frederick Banting who fought for the Canadian Army during WWI, got the Military Cross for his extraordinary heroic wartime efforts, and then later went on to help discover the insulin that keeps all of us with diabetes alive.

During WWII, he helped invent the G-suit to stop pilots from blacking out when they were turning or diving at high altitudes, and he also worked on developing a vaccine for mustard gas burns -- even testing the gas and antidotes on himself because he didn't feel it was humane or ethical to test an unproven vaccine on soldiers. His own self-experiments caused him injure his leg and walk with a limp for the rest of his life. And some of his top-secret military research may have actually led in part to his death in the 1940s.

So even though Dr. Banting was from Canada, his contributions impacted every soldier worldwide during his own time of service and beyond, and we think it's appropriate to give him a special nod today -- despite this being an American holiday and the fact that Canada's equivalent isn't until July 1.

Do you know someone with diabetes who served in the American military who deserves a special nod as well? Let us know in the comments, please.

With that, we hope everyone has a good Memorial Day 2017!