Family Reunions. You Gotta Love Them

We always have more than one family reunion to go to every year. There is the annual reunion of my grandpa and grandma's descendants. We love going to this reunion, as it is held in beautiful Logan Canyon at a tiny little cabin that my grandparents built a million years ago. My grandparents have been gone for a long time now, and only half of their daughters are still living (including my sweet mom), but the tradition lives on, and we all love to gather and remember the wonderful couple who started this family. We usually get a few of my kids and their spouses tagging along, which we love. It is always a truly lovely day.

And then there is another annual reunion that is even closer to home in more ways than one. It is the reunion of my parents and all of their descendants. Since they had 6 daughters and 33 grandchildren, and oodles of great-grands, this is a good-sized reunion, and always lots of fun. Most of us live within an hour of each other, so we do see each other throughout the year at different times, but there is still something special about getting together specifically for a reunion. We haven't had this one yet this year... it is coming up on Monday, and I'm sure a great time will be had by all!

And (drumroll, please) this year was the first (of many) reunions for Bob and I and our descendants. It seems strange to have a reunion with our names at the head of it! There are only 12 of us at the moment, with 2 more on the way, but we knew we needed to start sometime and this seemed as good a time as any. We wanted the grand-babies to grow up knowing we've held the reunions since they were born. Now, some may wonder why we would need a reunion, because we all live within 30 minutes (some as close as just down the street) from each other, and all of the menfolk in the family work for Bob, and see each other many times a day. But as I said above, there is something special about getting together for a reunion and celebrating being a family. We played together, and talked and laughed and ate together. It was a sweet moment in time for Bob and I.

We love this family! Number 1 and 2 grandbabies didn't want
to hold their own signs, but you get the point...

We started the day out with a grand kids treasure hunt. Since only one of our grand kids is actually walking, we had him put a treasure in his bag, and then one in his cousin's bag. It was darling, and fun to think about the future years when we will have lots of grand kids running around our trails.

And is a reunion really a reunion without the "guess how many candies in the jar" game? I think not.

While the kabobs were cooking, we lazed around on the deck. There were coloring pages of each member of the family strewn across the tables with crayons, for kiddos and anyone else who felt like coloring. We had some real masterpieces that I wish I had taken photos of! I also put one of each of the coloring pages into a "coloring book" for each of the grand kids to take home and color later on (or when they are old enough to actually know what a crayon does).

We also had my niece come up and take some real photos of our family. Can't wait to see how they turned out!

That night we played a family quiz game to get to know all of the members of the family a little better. It was enlightening and lots of fun. And for answering correctly, you got to have a ticket in the raffle with your name on it, which is all good, since it upped your chances of winning something at the end of the night. Each couple ended up winning at least one thing at the raffle. Yay! 

Our first ever reunion wasn't fancy or elaborate, but it was exactly what I had hoped. And it gave us a great jumping off point for many, many years to come!

Yep... it is ALWAYS worth the time and effort to go to family reunions. You definitely have to love them!