My wife and I have been blessed to raise and educate six children, who have produced twelve grandchildren for us to love and spoil. Our children enjoy one another’s company, but as they married and entered the workforce after college and professional school, they relocated to places far from each other and us – California, Virginia, Northern Minnesota, and Massachusetts. Only one chose to live where we live in Des Moines, and we cherish the time we are able to spend with our daughter and her family.
Through the years, our family has been able to gather around holidays or other special occasions. Those are times during which our family shares memories and new experiences. However, it has become increasingly difficult to have everyone in the same place at the same time. At the suggestion of our son, we decided to explore having a family reunion at a time and place when all the family, children and grandchildren, could vacation together.
Coupled with busy professional careers and kids' activities, finding a time and location that fits everyone’s schedule is a challenge. Fortunately, my wife is a great planner and organizer, a key skill set for any family reunion. I followed the “smart” path and let her run with it. I am glad that I did!
One of my sons had vacationed at a resort on Gull Lake in Minnesota, about two hours northwest of Minneapolis, and thought it might be a good place for a family gathering. My wife investigated and found that the resort had villas available for large family gatherings and lots of activities for young children and adults, including beaches on the lake right below the villas, kayaks, paddle boards, boat rentals, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis and pickleball courts, and golf courses (including a kid-friendly par 3 course), at prices we could afford. We encouraged our children to review the website and the list of amenities and activities to determine if this site would work and asked for dates when they would be available to come. Everyone liked it. So, about five years ago, we began our “family reunion” legacy at the resort.
At this point, we discovered the reasons why advanced planning was critical. First, we had to determine dates when one of the villas would be available. We discovered that we had to place the reservation about one year in advance to reserve a villa. We also learned that towards the end of each year, the doctors in our family planned their vacation time for an entire year, and as a result, we had to wait for their schedule to be approved. The family reunion needed to follow the end of the grandchildren’s summer activities, but precede the commencement of school (which we discovered started at different times for different grandchildren and the school teacher in the family). Having a major airport in Minneapolis into which our East Coast and West Coast families could fly and then have a relatively short drive was also a key factor. Although the available weeks were limited, we ultimately were able to reserve a villa for a week when all children and grandchildren could come. Everyone had nearly one year to make their plans and to anticipate with excitement our first family reunion. The grandchildren referred to it as the “Family Special,” which it certainly turned out to be.
With a location and date reserved on everyone’s schedule, we still had the issue of feeding the large group of people who were coming. We solved this by everyone contributing towards breakfast and lunch supplies and each family being responsible for planning and preparing one dinner during the stay. It helped that a grocery store was not far from the resort. Our children enjoy cooking and, frankly, are very good at it. We looked forward to a different menu each night, and best of all, for my wife and me, we did not have to prepare it.
The last “major” planning assignment was allocating family sleeping quarters. Our children thought that since we were furnishing the location, we should have the master suite. Of course, we did not object to that and “humbly” accepted. Then, we let our children determine how to allocate the remaining bedrooms. It all worked relatively smoothly. With the plan in place, we could all look forward to the “Family Special.”
Once everyone arrived and settled into their space, we were able to enjoy all the amenities the resort had to offer. The beach was a short walk down the hill, and everyone enjoyed the water, including the kayaks and paddle boards. The swimming pools were also a favorite for our grandchildren. We took the older grandchildren to play golf on the par 3 course, which was an adventure in locating golf balls and avoiding errant shots. One afternoon, we rented a pontoon boat large enough for the entire group and toured the massive lake that is Gull Lake. My sons rented jet skis and gave each older grandchild a ride around the bay. I played pickleball for the first time. After dusting off my former tennis skills and adjusting to the slower pace and lower bounce of the pickleball, I found some success with it. All in all, the “Family Special” was a wonderful time. So much so that our children and grandchildren asked if we could do it again. We have now had two family reunions at the same resort.
During these family gatherings, we spent evenings on the large deck overlooking the lake, talking with our children about their lives and ours. There were many stories recounting their time together growing up, college experiences, and life experiences. Since most of them had their own children at the time, we shared child-rearing stories, issues, and solutions. We talked about their plans for the future, as well as our own. While the adults were conversing, our grandchildren spent time playing with one another in the large family room in the basement or tossing bags in a spirited game of Cornhole in the yard below the deck. With everyone together, my son arranged for a professional photographer to take pictures of the entire family and separate ones of each individual family. It was truly a “Family Special” for all of us.
In her article, The Value of Family Stories, Robin Fivush, Ph.D., the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Developmental Psychology at Emory University, describes the importance of sharing family stories at family gatherings, such as family reunions, to preserving and passing on family history and the impact they can have on children and future generations. According to Dr. Fivush, “Families that tell and share more [family] stories have adolescents and young adults who do better on a host of measures: They have higher self-esteem, a higher sense of mastery in the world, lower anxiety, and a higher sense of meaning and purpose.”
I grew up in a family that was geographically separate, much like my own. Family reunions simply did not occur. On a few occasions, we would visit my maternal grandmother when some of my cousins were there. Those are fond but rare memories. I learned little about my family’s history.
On the other hand, many of my wife’s family lived in or around the same community, and family gatherings were commonplace. My wife and her aunts, uncles, and cousins developed good relationships and shared many experiences. She has a rich legacy of stories about her relatives and their lives (some as distant as the late 1800s) and shares those with our children and grandchildren, who delight in hearing the stories.
We hope to pass along as much of our family histories as we can. Our “Family Specials” are one way to accomplish that and also to provide another opportunity for our children to strengthen their relationships and our grandchildren to have new shared experiences to bind them together. The joy and excitement we see in their eyes and hear in their voices whenever they recount their experiences at the “Family Specials” and talk about future ones makes all of the planning and expense worth it.
