Missed Family Reunion

Saturday night, my mom's side of the family had a big family reunion in my hometown. We couldn't make it - even though we're waaay closer to home than before, it's still almost 7 hours; we couldn't have gone up until Saturday morning, we would've had to miss Will's (VICTORIOUS!) football game, and we would've had to come right back the next day. A long way to go for a couple hours... plus, I'll be right back up there in two more weeks: I'm taking the kids up to see Grandmommy [she hasn't seen us since June!!!] for several days the beginning of Thanksgiving week (before coming back for Thanksgiving here, since JB only has Thursday off.) All of the logical reasons why we should have passed it up were right...

But seeing the pics on Facebook, I can't help but be sad to have missed so many of these people, many of whom have never met our kids (& some not even JB!) and whom I haven't seen in well over ten years. :'( [We have a HUGE extended family - my Grandmommy was 2nd youngest of eight, and this was all of those cousins.]

I still did my part to contribute to the event, though. My mom scanned about 50 old family photos and I edited to get them clearer. Some of them had scrapes & holes that I actually repaired! (Yay, playing around on Photoshop Elements! :-D)

This is my Grandmommy's family almost 100 years ago, circa 1913. My great Aunt Frances wasn't born, yet; Grandmommy is the baby, and my Uncle Earl (he was my brother's & my fave character! He passed in the 90's) is the little boy:

There were so many other beautiful shots of the siblings as young adults:

I love looking for hints of my mom, myself, and the kids in these old photos. Seeing your genes over generations is such a miracle!!!

Comments

  1. I love, love, love family reunions! I love hearing stories from "way back when". Both of my parents' families are from southern Indiana, and when they were growing up, a large % of their extended family was close by, so cousins were brought up almost like siblings. I've never lived in the same state as any of our extended family, so I cherish the limited time I do get to spend with them. My mom was one of five kids, and her dad had several siblings as well, and those family reunions are huge, loud, and so much fun (we'd been doing them every two years, but we're overdue now...my mom's funeral in 2009 wound up be sort of a reunion by default, unfortunately, and we haven't had one since then). My dad was an only child, and a vast majority of his family passed away long ago, so we haven't had a reunion on that side during my lifetime. FB is great for communicating, but it isn't the same as spending facetime together. Still, I do feel fortunate to have many of my relatives from my mom's extended family who are friends with me on FB (even 70+ yr olds!).

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  2. I just sent a mass email to my mom's extended family requesting (coercing? demanding?) a reunion for next summer. You motivated me to get pushy and help get one planned. :)

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  3. I LOVE IT!!!! SO AWESOME!!!! :-)
    Sometimes I think I care about family get-togethers more than the rest of my fam, b/c I am the ONLY ONE who isn't in North Carolina. ONLY ONE. I crave my roots & these people, even the crazies :-P, but it's a less urgent thing for the rest of them, you know?

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  4. Yep, I totally know what you mean. They take it for granted that they see their extended family often (too much?), and so they aren't motivated to do such things like reunions that are local to them. But for those of us that aren't local, we relish the rare opportunity to catch up in-person (crazies and all!).

    My dad has the same problem with his teeny tiny HS reunions. Most of his two dozen classmates still live in southern Indiana, and many of the locals won't even come to the reunions, but he thrives on the opportunity of his infrequent visits to actually see some of them.

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