This Year's Reunion

Welcome Back!

My family has a yearly reunion, held early in June. We have a family float trip (yes we're that fun) on Friday, have an easy dinner together that evening, then the big "shabang" is on Saturday. Aunts and uncles into their 90s and cousins in their momma's arms show up in the early summer sun to chat and eat and take photos. We reminisce on family long gone and laugh at stories from some of the "wilder" relatives. It is a yearly event and we all look forward to it. My grandmother started this family reunion back in 1980 after genealogy had become a strong passion for her. We are coming up on the 40 year anniversary of this reunion... and we haven't missed a year! Since my grandma has passed on, the womanly role of cooking and serving the meals has fallen onto the shoulders of my mom and aunt... and the role of the family historian has fallen onto mine. I have so many ideas for this year and I can't wait to share them with my family and with everyone here who might find something useful!

In my initial brainstorm I have decided to do a few things...

1. A Museum of our Family: The quilts my grandmother put together, ephemera, war time letters, a nurses cap from our gg aunt Leona, stories, poems, old books found in boxes, perfume bottles, funeral guestbooks, and much, much more. My grandma loved these items so much that she couldn't bear to bring them out for everyone to see... I love these items so much that I know everyone else will too. I promised myself to do things differently. I'm keeping that promise for myself and for my family, who own these items just as much as I do.

2. $5 copies of cd's filled with family photos, documents, and anything else I can think to put on there. This money will go toward Ancestry and any DNA tests I have ordered.

3. Video interviews with the oldest members of the family... together and separately.

4. Take home questions about each person's life, family, and memories. These will come with my name, address, and email so they are able to send me their answers and any photos or family documents they come across in the next year.

5. Do-it-Yourself family tree. We will have our family members (young and old) get creative and make their own family tree... weather that be the lines of their individual families, or copies of the master one that goes beyond my g grandparents which we all descend from.

6. Lastly, my love for genealogy is rivaled only by my love of creating. I fill my time with research and with crafting "junk journals". This year I will be creating a journal for my family reunion to act as a guestbook. The instructions will ask each person to sign their name and tell us a little bit about their past year. This will be amazing to look back on as the years go by. Who knows, maybe 40 more years down the road my grandkids will be looking through this at our family reunion. By that time we will have had our reunion for 80 years!!!


Do you host family reunions every year?
What are some of the great traditions you all have created?
And what kinds of fun additions would you like to make?

Love always and happy hunting!
Morgan