This weekend, Amanda got to meet a much larger group of family members during the first Flessner siblings’ reunion in over a decade! Even I met new faces that I supposedly should’ve known but was too young to remember 10 years ago. Amanda came down Friday night, and Saturday noon, we headed to the 4H camp SW of Ames, near Luther.
Full details to follow!
At first she seemed a little aprehensive at meeting so many people, but I assured her we were all fairly normal people, and everybody is nice. Of couse, she was a hit with everyone, especially my aunts. About 45-50 people gathered at the same lodge we stayed at 10 years ago. Faint memories kept coming back to me as I wandered around the cabins, trails, and surrounding areas. There we plenty of pictures of past reunions to help jog my memory too.
Being the techie I am, I had a laptop, projector, screen, and small PA system along with the initial plan of showing movies/videos. The lodge, however, had a nice, new system with a big TV and a DVD/VCR combo. Not that anyone brought any movies anyway! Plus… as I was setting everything up, I realized I was missing the one piece I needed most: the power cable for the projector! Argh! Thankfully one of my sisters, Sherrie, was able to bring one from their computer.
In the meantime, I came up with a use for my setup besides movies. I quickly started running around taking mug-shots of everyone and setting up a simple power-point presentation with pictures of everybody grouped into families. I was mostly done when the power cable arrived, so I threw it up on the screen. People seemed to like being able to see who all was present and who belonged to who and everything else. Plus it helped me actually learn everyone’s names, a task I’m usually not very good at.
Amanda and I hiked around a bit in the afternoon, really enjoying ourselves, even though we seemed to go up and down some pretty big hills. We certainly got a workout! Some of my cousins played basketball and volleyball. Too bad we didn’t get into the big football game the family had last reunion. I suppose people were younger then, though 😉 . Speaking of being younger… it was strange to see all these people I remembered as little kids at the last reunion all grown up now. Then Amanda reminded me that I was grown up too. Where does time go? Another strange occurrence was seeing other coolers and items labeled “Flessner.” In most of the get-togethers I’ve been at, I’ve been the only Flessner family present. Now we have all my uncle’s sons and their families, all with the same last name as me!
A grilled hot dog/summer sausage/etc. dinner for 50 was followed by s’mores around a campfire singing to 3 or 4 guitars and a congo. I knew a few old songs, faked a few more, and tapped my foot to the rest of them. Amanda and I made s’mores but didn’t stay out too long. It was getting really cold, even with a big fire going. We went back to Ames for the night, though next year, we think it would probably be a better idea to just stick around and sleep in the lodge there. We’d get more time in with the family and not have to drive home late at night.
Once I gained conciousness on Sunday morning, Amanda and I headed back for pancakes and sausages. The morning’s entertainment was primarilly seeing everyone in the family try to break into my cousin’s car after he locked his keys in it. Unfortunately (fortunately, maybe?) no one in the family has a criminal background, so two hours later, no progress had been made.
We had a really nice, small Sunday-morning sing-a-long at a kind of outdoor church. We’re a pretty musical family, so without any instruments, we still sang some old favorites and sounded pretty nice doing so. Somewhere between then and lunch, a service truck came and got into my cousin’s car. We had a good lunch, hiked around a little more, and went home about 1:30.
I guess I left out all the details about meeting family members you hadn’t seen in ages, conversing, and watching the football game, but I assumed this was all implied in the “reunion” subject. It was a really great weekend. Everyone seemed to like Amanda, and she got to see a little more of what my family was like. A+ on this weekend!