Funny Family Faux Talent Show

We were in charge of the talent show for the family reunion.  We have so many talented people in the family, and a few with fabulous talents (I'm looking at you, boys who perform on Broadway!).  We all love to hear them sing and play the piano, but it does make some of the others a little bashful about sharing their talents.  No.  We need all the talents.

A couple of weeks before the reunion, I got all the volunteers I could, and then set out to find talents for the others.  Everyone has talents!  You just might not know about them yet.  So anyone who didn't offer a talent would get assigned one, and I let them know.  Too many people gave the wimpy, "I'm not really good at anything." Maybe this is how they would find out that they were good at something, after all.  Ha!

When everyone knew that I was serious about having a variety of talents, we got some pretty good volunteers.  We had a grocery guru share the secrets of picking produce.  We saw coin collections and home-made arrowheads.  We had singing and piano-playing, knock-knock jokes and skits.  We had a few art displays, as well.  But for the other folks, we had to draw them out and help them find their hidden talents.  

Between the volunteers, I called up family members and had them show us a talent that I picked from a list of possible talents.  They were impressive.  Here are the ideas I came up with, if you want to have your own faux talent show:

Sing a song from a Disney movie (we had soundtracks and props for several)

Yodel (with accompanying music)

Do a rain dance

Do a hula dance (wearing a grass skirt) (or tap dance, belly dance, riverdance, haka...)

Perform a magic trick (we brought a top had, gloves, a magic wand, and cards)

Dance the Can Can (with the appropriate accompaniment)

Play a song on a plastic recorder (of course we had a cheap plastic recorder!)

Walk down the runway (with large heels and a feather boa)

Impersonate a famous person

Pick something up with your toes

Breakdance or do the limbo

Do a puppet show (with socks)

Be a mime

Paint your best Bob Ross happy trees

Do a yoga demonstration / teach a yoga class

Do a dramatic reading from Dr. Seuss (we brought Hop on Pop)

Do a superhero demonstration (with cape)

"Whistle While You Work" while pantomiming chores

Yo a yo-yo

Snap all your fingers at once

Perform a kazoo duet

Do a cartwheel

We did have a bucket full of props (like a long red wig for "Ariel" to sing "Part of Your World," wooden spoons for the Swedish Chef) and soundtrack music for all the accompaniments.  Yes, it was a very long talent show.  But I've never laughed so hard!  Everyone had a great time and we did discover some impressive new talents.  Dr. Suess has never sounded more... impressive than the day Grandpa read it out loud.

Inked Pillows

I have a great big giant bed, and only two of us sleep in it.  More people are in it at other times - two big boys were sprawled across it last night, looking at pictures of a recent camping trip; and two littler boys with cold feet were snuggled in it with me much-too-early this morning.  I have great big pillows that fit on the bed, but I prefer to use the regular sized pillows.  Partly because they are Goldilocks-just-right, and mostly because of the nice pillowcases I have for them.

My grandmother made these pillowcases for my mother's trousseau.  I don't do fine handwork like this, so I can only imagine how many hours she spent embroidering and crocheting the edging.  The pillowcases went from her loving hands to my mother's cedar chest - where they stayed for decades.  My mother never used them.  I don't know whether they seemed to fancy to actually sleep on, or whether it was residual bad feelings from her short first marriage, or whether she just forgot about them.  But I love them.  They are old-fashioned and 100% cotton and they make me happy.

Recently, as I was making the bed in the morning, I noticed some extra decorations on one of the pillows.  Ball point pen marks!  Thankfully, they are on one of the plain great big pillows and not on grandmother's pretty pillows, but still!

Can you see it?  I went around for quite a while, grumbling at my small children for scribbling where they definitely should not have been!  Later, as I was pulling my hair up into a bun, I remembered that I had stuck a pen in my hair the day before... and I had done the pillowcase decorating while I was reading in bed, my head (and bun and pen) resting against the pillows.  Aargh.  I think my Grandma Amy is laughing at me for my lovely pillowcase skills.

Girl's Night Out

I spent the weekend with four of my lovely sisters-in-law.  These ones are the good women my brothers picked to marry.  So glad I get to be family with them!

Grandma Lucy

My maternal grandmother, my mother's mother, passed away when I was 5.  I don't remember much about her except a sweet powdery smell and the way she bounced me on her knee and sang,

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross

To see a fine lady upon a white horse.

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,

She will have music wherever she goes!

Then she would make me sway on her knee as she exclaimed, "Whoa, horse!"  I've jogged my own children on my knee countless times, reciting this same little song.  I love that I have a piece of my grandma that I can pass on to them.

A few months after Grandma died, Grandpa found a new sweet lady and married her - much to the surprise of his children!  She became my Grandma Lucy and we loved her.  She taught elementary school, and I thought she had a treasure trove in her downstairs closet because she had so many books!  They lived just up the street from us and I loved to spend hot sticky afternoons in the cool of her basement, lost in the dusty pages of her wonderful books.  She was always so good to us, and we never thought of her as a step-grandma; just Grandma Lucy.

Grandpa passed away 10 years ago, just the month before Jay did.  In the past few years, Grandma Lucy has gotten more and more frail.  A few weeks ago, she too crossed the bar.  We miss her happy smile, but we are happy for her.

The family has been cleaning out her house, and I found this stack of old school lunch trays there.  They were so cheerful, their pastel shades sweetly thinking back to a simpler time.  Just looking at them made me happy, and reminded me of Grandma Lucy.  Thanks for loving me, Grandma.  I hope I can encourage little children around me half as well as you did!

Big Family Christmas Parties

We had a big Christmas party with my brothers and their families over the Christmas break.  Actually, we had three family parties: an adult one with Trent's siblings and parents that we look forward to all year, the big party with all of Trent's family, and the big but not-as-big party with my family.  Trent's parents have seven children, and there are nearly 40 grandchildren, plus a handful of great-grandchildren, so we are getting to be a pretty large group.  I only have four brothers, and no married grandchildren (Alec is the oldest of that generation), but we are getting substantial as well.  All the parties were enjoyable, but I'm only going to write about the one with my family because I was in charge of it.  And I didn't take any pictures of the others.

We met in my brother's church building because we needed the space for the activities we would be doing.  I wanted to just play lots of games.  We marked off a space for the little kids and build table-and-blanket forts for them.  My small fry were very happy all day there with paper to color on and games to play and lots of blocks to build with and a huge pile of stuffed animals.  And they ran around the halls some, too.

The first thing we did was take a group picture, before we got too wild and ragged.  I'll see if I can find that.  I think we ended up having more than 30 people there.

We went through our game closet and brought all the games we were tired of, and my mom's old games for a game swap.  We just piled all those games on a long table and the middle kids played some during the day.

We had a family tree race, and tried to be the first team to assemble our ancestors in the right order.  We learned that we know more about our pioneer forefathers and mothers than we do about our German ancestors.  We also learned which brother we should have on our team!  (hint - he's the deep-thinking one)

We played a game of Family Feud, where we learned that slamming your hand down hard on a bell really, really hurts, but it's worth it (maybe?) if you get the question for your team.  Also, trying to kiss your wife as a means of distraction so she doesn't hit the bell before you may not work as well as you want it to.

Trent arranged for a pizza truck to bring us our dinner, which was delicious and fun.  I'll never know how someone figured out to put raspberries on pizza, or mangos, or peanut Thai sauce, but they made some really amazing combinations.  And the dessert pizza!  Yum.  What a man I have.

After dinner, we cleared out all the tables and chairs and got ready for the big snowball fight.  We all brought our Christmas boxes and leftover wrapping paper and piled it up in the middle of the gym floor.  We split the boxes, the paper, and the people into two more-or-less equal teams, handed each team two rolls of packing tape, and blew the start whistle.  

The rules were simple.  The forts had to be behind the free-throw line.  If you got hit with a "snow" ball, you had to lay down before you could run away.

I loved watching Chris's vision and creativity with building the fort and outfitting his little brothers.  He was so patient!

The forts were pretty impressive, and surprisingly sturdy.  All the kids (especially the big ones) had a good time building.  It doesn't hurt to have men with lots of building experience, die-hard Lego creators and even a general contractor in the mix.

Freddie in his peppermint armor.  He refused to take his helmet off, even though it significantly impeded his sight.

I didn't bother further explaining or enlarging upon the rules, so they developed naturally.  Scrunched wrapping paper doesn't fly very well, and was helped out with a bit of tape.  "Getting hit" was defined as "on your skin or clothing," so elaborate armor was invented.

Georgie ran laps around the gym so his wrapping paper cape would fly out behind him.  He also had a box-helmet with a tall red flag on it, but it was too easy for the enemy to spot and thus was abandoned.

I think they spent more time in building forts, making ammo, and crafting costumes than actually lobbing hits against the other team.  It was fun to watch the creativity and comraderie.  After a while, but before they could possibly be ready! I blew my anemic whistle for the snowball fighting to commence.  And then I moved out of the way. 

We had some couches set up on the sidelines for Opa and mothers with small babies and anyone else who would rather watch.  I retreated to safety there, although we were not immune to the occasional badly-lobbed ball or retreating warrior running recklessly back to his fort.

We even had Goliath, taunting the other team to send out their best warriors to best him.  The little girl in front of him came our and did just that.

The snowball fight ended as the forts were falling apart, and when one team's fort was propelled over the center line.  It was a wonderful, fun mess!  We played all day, and had a great time.  At least I did.  I love being with these good people!  See what happens when you have a good family?  Families are pretty awesome, and I'm grateful for mine.

Football Road Trip

I'm not sure how it all started, but my dad got it in his head that he needed to go to a football game.  The man hasn't been in a stadium attending a football game since... oh... I was in college and worked at the stadium and got him free tickets.  That's been a while.  But this year, he needed to go to a game.  It was a challenge, because the regular season games were over.  No worries.  My brothers jumped on the idea of a family road trip and we all went!  I'm still a little gobsmacked that it even happened.  The last time me and my brothers were on a road trip together was when we were headed to Disneyland in 1987 in a borrowed RV which gracefully broke down in the middle of  an LA freeway.  During rush hour.  What great memories!

 

We hope to have a little bit less adventure on this trip, so we took a more reliable minivan.  And shoehorned me and all of my very tall brothers in it.  We were... cozy.

We ended up making some fun new memories.  It wouldn't have happened without a dream, some quick decision-making, four good-natured sisters-in-law, and my loving husband.  We couldn't have gone without them keeping the home fires burning. 

And hey, maybe we'll do it again sometime.  In another 23 years, maybe?

Family Spotlight

We have a weekly bulletin that comes with our church program every Sunday.  On the back, they highlight a different family each week.  This week, it is our family's turn, so I thought I'd include the little bits we wrote about us.  Yeah, it's a small program and we are a big family, so you only get the shortest of short version of everyone.  We don't have fascinating bios, not a professional portrait, but we're just a regular old family.  Here goes...

Opa is the resident patriarch of a large, loving family including 28 1/2 grandchildren!  He spends time working on the model train layout in his garage and loves it when people come over to run trains with him.

Dad loves helping everyone around him.  He is a whiz in the kitchen and really enjoys cooking and baking.  He sang with the Mormon Youth Choir, and signs ASL beautifully.

Mom enjoys spending time with her family and sleeping.  If she remembered what a hobby was, she might write, dabble in graphic design, hand-letter calligraphy, or crochet.

Alec (21) is serving a mission in Cape Town, South Africa.  He is learning great things and growing, and will be coming home next March.

Ben (19) is currently loving his mission in Madagascar.  He loves to learn and play basketball. No, he hasn't seen any lemurs, but he has learned to like rice.  

Chris (17) is a senior this year and looking forward to track and field season where he runs hurdles.  He has a real talent for computer animation and 3-D modeling.

David (14) is in ninth grade.  He likes singing, dancing, and being with friends.  He enjoys track and field, building things, and solving problems. He likes cooking and baking bread for his mission fund.

Edward (12) is in seventh grade.  He likes eating, sleeping, reading, and hanging out with friends.  He is learning to play the trombone and guitar.

Angel (7) is our little ray of sunshine.  She's doing great in first grade in spite of her tumble out the window a few years ago.  Miracles do happen - thanks for your prayers!

Frederick and George (5) are loving kindergarten.  Fred likes playing the piano, giving backscratches, and playing with Legos.  George is becoming a good writer and likes to build things with any kind of blocks.

Our favorite meal is traditional Sunday tacos where everyone pitches in to help each other get to the eating part!  Working together takes a lot of the stress out of our Sabbath meal.

Favorite family traditions include our annual family birthday party with pizza on fine china, measuring up every birthday on our growth chart, and monthly Family Home Evening with all the cousins.

Family Reunions at the Temple

The whole reason we were able to pull in 6 families from more than 3,000 miles is this.

 

The first grandchild was getting married, and he and his wife-to-be decided to get married here, in the temple.  We believe that there is a scared sealing power in the temple that can tie a family together for eternity.  It just doesn't make sense that something you worked so hard on for your whole life would just be gone when you die.  We believe that families are forever.

One of the things we did at the reunion (or rather, as we were traveling to it) was to take pictures of your family in front of any temple you passed. 

 

All together, I think we got pictures of  14 different temples.

 It was fun to see the different families as they sent in their pictures.  We went out of our way to be at the temples, but it wasn't a trouble.

 Because really, this is all worth it.

 

For more information about forever families, click here.

Family Reunion Shirts, Part II

And here is the result of our family reunion shirt-making that we started back here. 

These are the grandchildren in this family, minus Alec and Ben of course, and one other  granddaughter who just graduated from college.  They are all numbered in age order, and it's fun to see them all lined up like this!

This is the family of Jay, my first husband.  There were five children in his family, and he was the second.

I like how the colors show when Jays' siblings started their families.  The older sister's family is the bright green.  I'm sorry that they were not fond of their color, but we will give them a different one if we ever do this again.  She was married first, and had two children before Jay and I were married.  Alec and Ben are numbers five and six, and other missing grandchild is number three, so there that bright green chunk at the beginning is a little misleading.  My kids pull the #5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18, 21, and 22 spots.  Our family has the aqua shirts, and the next brother's family is in the darker green shirts.  Child #4 brought a husband and a daughter in the family at the same time, and you'll just have to imagine that cute girl in baby blue at the #3 spot.  The baby of the family is sporting dark blue, and you can see his cute little redheads at the end of the line.

What a bunch of wonderful people we have!  Thanks, Jeanne and Dallas, for the love and support you've given all of us over the years.  Look what you started!

Family Reunion Shirts

We have a family reunion coming up for Jay's side of the family.  It's a little bit unexpected, but since the first grandchild is getting married, everyone is coming in town.  We don't get together very often, so as long as we are all in the same state, we might as well get together.  We'd love to party more,  but we are spread out across thousands of miles and several states.  That makes it hard.  In fact, I figured we will be logging over 27,000 combined miles during this trip!

 I'm the local-est one, because I'm only 40 miles away from the bride's home.  That means I'm the de facto party planner and event coordinator.  It's been a bit of a challenge to put all the details together on such short notice, but we've done it.  I'm so grateful that I have such a fun husband to work with - he's made things so much easier for me.

 

I just finished the reunion t shirts today.  We didn't have time to get them professionally printed, so we made up an easy iron-on instead.  Each family has a different color, and each grandchild sports their own number.  It was fun to do the legwork to order all 23 grandkids and see which ones are older.  We don't think of grandkid pecking order very often since we don't see each other much, but the shirts turned out well!

 (edit)  Here are all the kids (minus three who were out of state) in their shirts.  So fun!