I survived...

Me and my cousin/best friend.

 I survived planning a successful family reunion! I don't recommend do it alone! 

What is a successful reunion? 

• Everyone arrived safely
• We didn't run out of food...not even for the late arrivals
• Everyone had a great time
• Everyone enjoyed the change!!!

We did our reunion a little different this year.  Since I was the one planning it, I changed alot of the traditional things we do during the reunion.  I was worried that I would get some resistence.  I was worried that we wouldn't get a large turnout.  But I was wrong. 

I think the family was ready for some change. 

This year, we held the reunion, not in traditional Elizabeth City, NC.  But in Orlando, FL.  Nor did we hold it at the usual 'last weekend in August' that we have had it just about every year.  I moved the date up about 2 weeks to correspond when the kids were still out for summer break.  We had just over 100 people in attendance.  Which is awesome.  Granted when it's in Elizabeth City..we have more.  But, a good majority of our family stays there.  So, being at the reunion is not a traveling event for them.  I was happy that we had a great turn out at this year. 

Many people took advantage of turning the reunion into the summer vacation.  Being in Orlando made it easy! 

Now I need to a vacation to recover!

Late Follow up on Wordless Wednesday

I didn’t get a chance to finish writing about this picture before. A family emergency arose and I had to put everything on hold. Now that the emergency is over and the family reunion planning is almost finished, I can get back to my roots.

So, about the picture…

My daughter and my mother are pictured above on their way to visit their roots.  My mother was so exicted and my daughter seemed miserable.  I mean, what a mean mom she has for sending her on an all expense paid trip and her getting her passport stamped before me!! 

Of course, there roots are my roots too, but I didn’t get a chance to go.  Way to expensive and I can't take that much time off from work.  But, this was an amazing opportunity for my daughter to go and visit relatives in Ethiopia for a month over the summer. They went to Mek’ele in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

As you can see the look on my daughters face..she’s wasn’t looking forward to the trip. In all honesty, she didn’t want to go. But, I told her that she didn’t have a choice. She wants to travel and traveling isn’t always going to be spa and resorts. Plus, she going to see family. What 12 year old gets these kinds of opportunities? As good experiences go, I think this one was perfect for her.

So, for a month, she stayed with my aunt (my mom’s sister), uncle, great grandmother, and 8 cousins. She got to see that simple luxuries like…underwear was a complete anomaly to her female cousins. Not that they were poor, it just wasn’t something that they wore. She got to see that her 12 year old cousin does just about everything that her mother. All the cooking, cleaning, even child rearing. A far cry from my American child who grumbles over just washing dishes.

Not so surprisingly though, she really enjoyed herself. Stereotypes that she left home with faded away. (she said, “it’s not as hot as FL..actually, FL is hotter!”). She was able to see London for a short time (“People really sound like that… “)

All in all, even though sending her sent mommy into the poor house temporarily, I’m glad she was able to get the experience she did. When she’s 20+, she’ll be happy about it too. But as a pre-teen…she’s just annoyed again…