family reunion activities

15 years ago

our family gets together once a year for the annual reunion. there will be over 100+ people attending. this is our 4th year and we have chosen a new place (indoors & electricity). we are having growing pains though, and we need ideas and suggestions...

we want to do something other than get together eat and leave.

we are looking for things that we can do to to create memories and strengthen the family ties.

i have thought of collecting receipes to bind into a cookbook. the twist on this is that it must be one that is associated with a particular family member. E.X. grannys homemade soup. AND that the person submitting must tell a favorite memory about the person and or the reciepe.

we are looking to also have a horseshoe match, and a place for playing music and singing, and maybe bingo.

other than that,,,, i am out of ideas.....

what other things have you all done at family reunions that do not cost alot of money and is fun for a large group of people. also anyone with activities for little kids please feel free to chime in as well...

ideally there would be plenty of family members helping, BUT, reality is i think that there will be very few involved...

any help is greatly appreciated.

thanks

z

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Comments (3)

Meghane
15 years ago
One year we drew the family tree on a VERY large tablecloth- each family member signed his/her name. Our family is quite musical, so we always have at least one band playing. We have plenty of kiddie instruments for them to play too, especially tambourine- they LOVE that! We also have 4 wheel drive vehicles and a farm to play on, horseshoes, bonfire, horseback riding, etc. Obviously not an option indoors. Everyone brings family albums and lots of time is spent catching up. Our reunions are every other year; last year over 400 people showed up. Then again, we have a very loose definition of family. The tree was pretty twisted LOL!
gellchom
15 years ago
I think that the cookbook is a great idea.

At our reunion, someone made a huge family tree -- somehow it was all linear -- it wrapped around two walls of the banquet room. We all spent a lot of time looking at that.

Our family loves to tell and hear stories, the same ones again and again, but at an extended family reunion, you will even have some people who haven't heard them all before. Can you ask a representative of each branch to tell a favorite family story?

Have fun.
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We had a reunion last summer after many years of not having one. It wasn't near as organized as most of the suggestions listed above. We plan to have another one this summer. Hopefully better and more innovative this year. Turn out was light last year but hoping for a bigger turn out this summer. We reserved a shelter at one of the local parks and put an ad in the local newspaper giving the date and place. Some people received personal invitations if they lived further away and didn't subscribe to the local newspaper. The ad was costly so probably would have been cheaper to send out invitations to each family. I do family history research so I took along my book for everyone to look at. Then I also made a poster board with wedding pictures of my grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles. Underneath each picture I put their birthdates, wedding dates and if deceased put that date also. Both were a big hit.We had a playground in front of our shelter for the smaller children and was also a swimming beach nearby. Food was potluck and worked out well. People just had fun visiting. Most of the crowd was seniors so I don't think games would have gone over too well at our gathering but I love hearing all the ideas. I took my camera and snapped pictures of each individual family as they arrived. Then we took one group shot but some had already left. I wish I had thought of the group shot earlier in the day. I love the idea of hiring a photographer but that would get too expensive for our group. I also have heard where some reunions each family wears different colored tshirts to identify which group they belong to. We had name tags at our gathering. One other reunion we attended had a notebook on a table as you entered the shelter and you wrote your name, address, email and a memory of your descendants. Everybody could read those notes and next year it will be shared at the next reunion. Also one couple was in charge of pictures and then they posted them to a web site to be shared with the reunion attendees. All the pictures were labeled so if you forgot some names it was a nice reminder. Keep posting ideas. I will be checking to see what other ideas come up.
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Family reunion activities
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We have a family reunion every year. We usually have games for the kids, but we also have some activities for the older family members. One year, we have everyone bring a baby picture. We mounted them on a display board and had a "guess who" contest. We usually have bingo, because that is popular with our crowd. Probably the most popular thing that we have done is to have everyone bring two or three of their favorite recipes to the reunion with a short (1-2 sentences) explination of why the recipe is a favorite. Then, I took all of them and typed them and put them in 3 ring binders so that everyone would have a "family" cookbook. The grossest thing we ever did was when my 80+ grandmother started a guess-how-many-flies-will-land-on-the-flystrip contest. She charged everyone $1 per guess with the winner getting the money. My family is full of gamblers who will be on ANYTHHING. I would not suggest this, but it is a funny memory that I have of my grandmother.
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Thanks, Lowspark - we'll get lots of ice the morning of the picnic and our house is already baby-proofed (hooray!). I've been doing lots of laundry so there's lots of fresh towels, too - nothing like a soggy towel - yuck! Dottie - great idea about washing pot holders! They're soaking in Oxyclean right now, but I wouldn't have thought of that! I also took out a bunch of serving spoons to polish up. Yes, Lindac, I've stocked up on TP and paper towels, lol! Good reminder about the music; we have satellite radio but I need to research a couple of music types so we're not fumbling at the last minute. Time for me to find some post-its! Thanks you guys!
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This is actually pretty common and we have seen this on just about every job site with both prefinished and unfinished installs. This, however, is not to say we install these boards. I see the split that you are referring to. Sometimes with solid hardwood, the boards, due to the graining, have natural fault lines that aren't necessarily noticeable at visual inspection some, however, are very noticeable. Sometimes when it gets stapled into the floor, the splitting will happen. Sometimes, during the milling and prefinishing process, this happens. Hardwood is naturally occuring and it has its own set of imperfections. When we install hardwood, we literally inspect every single piece of flooring that goes down- ESPECIALLY prefinished. I know that might sound unrealistic but trust me, we do. We've seen all too often that the milling process of the hardwood wasn't perfect on certain pieces. When we see this, these boards get tossed aside in hopes that they can be used for something other than waste(whether it be a rip or a cut off piece from the opposite side where the imperfection lies) Sometimes what happens is when the floor gets stapled, it will split due to no fault of the installer but rather the hardwood wasn't sufficient enough to withstand the staple. In that case, this board gets pulled out and in its place a new board goes down. Now, with that being said, the only way to truly fault the installer is by them failing to remove the damaged board and just continuing the installation. After each row is down, we like to check and make sure all pieces have held up and that the boards are in tact. Hardwood tends to split when the humidity is VERY low for a very long time drying out the hardwood so much that they end up splitting. from our team here at The Couture Floor Company The Flooring Blog The Couture Floor Company
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auntmurry
15 years ago
We have our annual family reunion in July. Since we are spread out across the U.S. we celebrate Christmas in July. Everyone looks forward to it no matter what age. How can you complain about Christmas cookies and gifts in the middle of summer? It's so much less stressful than trying to get together in December. One year Santa came from across the lake on water skis. A month or two before the reunion the organizer sends out a request for recipes and they are distributed at the reunion. This was started before we all had computers so you can imagine how the cookbook has grown. This last year I was in charge of planning. I planned a few games but nothing that required everyone to play at the same time. Google "word search" and find a site where you can do a word search puzzle for no cost. Use family names, special places, etc. (I used names and things related to the family cottage - like lake, fishing, outhouse.) I also made custom wrappers for Hershey's bars. Again, go to Google and search for custom candy bar wrappers. There are a number of sites where you can order them but I just used the sites for ideas. I used family photos - some old and some recent. Another game I planned was "guess the number of items in the jar." The closest guess won the jar. I used silly yet meaningful things like gummy worms, candy that Grandma used to buy, etc. If you can get a few facts from each person ahead of time you can play a game where you try to guess who the facts are about. Facts like I graduated from high school in 1976: I once lived in a foreign country; My spices are in alphabetical order (ok, so I am a bit compulsive but at least I can find my spices.) Fun game and you can learn a lot about each other. We also have an annual Rummy (Grandma's favorite card game) every year. If you want to get silly make temporary tatoos on your computer with your family name or initial. Think I bought the tatoo paper at Office Depot. Just have fun and don't get too serious. You want to be able to enjoy the reunion too!

family reunion activities

Comments (3)

Meghane

gellchom

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