The initial plans morphed into a different group, but the final edition was perfect. It was to have been my brother Bill, and his two daughters, Ann and Jane. Bill's health prevented him from making the trip but Ann and Jane came and brought a delightful friend ,Ruthie , along with them. Ann came from Alton, Ill. Jane and Ruthie from Phoenix, Arizona. Another cousin, Charlotte from Pelzer, S.C. brought her daughter Amelia with her. The Atlanta cousin, Bonnie, came laden with all kinds of wonderful foods. The cousins who flew in were met at the airport by cousin Bruce from near Atlanta. All of this took place on Saturday. On labor day Bruce came back up and brought his two sons, Reed and Grant for the afternoon and supper. Reed is a new student at Ga. Tech but left campus to see his cousins. His last reunion was when he was a baby. Grant had not met any of them and he was the youngest cousin here.
Not all of the cousins could make the trip. Since it was hastily put together and my home was limited in space and accommodations, it was not as large as it could have been. This is how it went down. On Friday Bonnie arrived first straight from her job in Atlanta. She had four totes and one huge cooler filled with foods. She got right to work slicing and dicing and put together two huge dishes to be used the next day. Also she had one casserole to be cooked later. All of the gourmet snacks and drinks kept us well fed for the week-end. Charlotte arrived with her daughter around 6:30. By 9:00 we were all ready to call it a day. Charlotte said she could not sleep on my soft beds so she found her place on a long cargo couch in the very open living room area. Amelia had her own bed upstairs and Bonnie and I shared a room and bed in the upper north west room. Not unexpectedly we all slept until 8:00 the next morning. Jane, Ann and Ruthie came the next day when Bruce picked them up at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Much was done and shared this past week-end, but here are some of the highlights. We had several big meals in the sun room and by adding a small bistro table to the end of the glass top table we got eight of us around it all quite comfortably. The weather was perfect to be in the sun room. Another day, some of us went down to the dock to swim . My neighbor, Skip had offered to take us for a boat ride on Lake Lanier. Four of us went out for an hour.
While we were gone, Jane got out the two boxes of family records. They were sent down by Jane Ellen from Abingdon, Va. Uncle Gene had collected these letters, diaries and pictures from over the years, some as far back as the 1800's. Jane had agreed to head up this endeavor to organize the family records. When we began to drift back from the lake she had a plan to present to us.
We planned how to preserve these papers for future generations. Rose took the job of going through the letters of Rose Gamp, putting them in chronological order. Bonnie offered to scan them and put it all together in printable form. Bonnie will take the diaries, glean the important events and get them in printable form. Jane will take all of the old pictures, get them in order along with helpful explanations and scan them for printable application.
Ann, Jane and Ruthie got to ride in my work horse (golf cart) up to the vineyard. It gave me a big thrill to be able to show my kiwi vines to the girls and to have them pick their own kiwi. Of course the kiwi will have to ripen for a few weeks but it was all great fun.
On two evenings we all gathered up on the deck where we could look out on the top parts of the trees. We took out extra chairs along with drinks and snacks and shared a lot of good stories and a lot of good laughs.
The one blip on the screen of this trip was when Ann, Char and Bonnie walked up to the vineyard and stepped on a yellow jackets ground nest. The yellow jackets responded in their usual way. I was not there having prudently gone to bed early, but am told that clothes began flying off in every direction. I am sure the walk back to the house was not leisurely. They put soda on their stings and then headed into town for benedryl.
Char has taken on the job of enlisting another cousin not here to help with planning for a larger reunion in a centrally located state park or perhaps a place on the Atlantic beach. Hopefully with planning ahead we can have more cousins in on the fun along with their families.
I think we all agreed that this was a great reconnection with family members that we do not often get to see. I certainly did enjoy hosting the group. It was so easy to have my daughter take over the kitchen and my son being the chauffeur for the cousins flying into Atlanta. I look forward to seeing them all again next summer, somewhere, sometime.
No comments:
Post a Comment