It’s August! The theme for August in my family devotionals ebook, available for free over here, is families. If you want to know why I picked families as August’s main theme, skip to the * at the bottom of this post.
My husband and I just had a family reunion for our descendants just this last month of July. As grandparents and near empty nesters, we are at the point where it’s needed. We only have 1/7 of our children left in the nest, with 3/7 married, 2/7 as parents, and 5 grandchildren. One of them lives out of the country, and over the summer 2 more lived out of state. For four glorious days, all of us (mostly, minus my missionary son, and three other members who missed daytime activities, but were there in the evening: long story) were together for games, eating, and connection. it was glorious!
For July I shared missionary stories to go with the missionary theme of my devotionals ebook, and now that it’s August I will be sharing some family-themed stories and family reunion ideas.
In his General Conference address last October, President Dallin H. Oaks of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasized the importance of family and encouraged family reunions. My sister-in-law took that to heart and has organized a family reunion for my husband and his 8 siblings which will happen next month. I’m so excited about that. I love family reunions! One year, when I was a young mom and pregnant, in 1995, my husband and I attended 7 family reunions in a row in the months of July and August. I just love them so much, we went to all of them, even though I was pregnantl-y huge and it was hot. That baby I was pregnant with, my married daughter, was the hostess for our out of town family members for our recent family reunion so I’ve come full circle in a way. Maybe she sensed a love of family reunions in utero.
So let’s talk family reunions and how to do them inexpensively.
Family reunions can come in all sorts of sizes and flavors. They can be as simple as having a potluck in a park, church or home, or as elaborate as multi-day affairs in a lodge or airbnb. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on them, even if they are multi-day affairs. Over my 55 years of life, I have been to dozens of family reunions for so many of the branches of our family tree, so I consider myself a family reunion expert. You can read about some of the reunions I’ve attended: here, here and here.
Here’s how you can do a multi-day reunion on the cheap, similar to how we did our recent one for our descendants.
- Have housing at somebody’s home that has extra bedrooms. Fortunately, my married daughter has 6 bedrooms and was willing to do this. She hosted three brothers, two sisters-in-law, and a nephew and niece. That’s just on her side. She also hosted her mother-in-law and niece and nephew on her husband’s side from a reunion they had the previous week, AND her sister and her husband’s grandfather live with them. So it was a full house! If you hold the reunion in the summer, which I highly recommend, some people can sleep in tents, and then you have more instant bedrooms! We did this once for a family reunion in Idaho.
2. If #1 isn’t possible, then rent a place far enough ahead of time in order to pay less, and have families who stay there split the cost. This is what we did when we attended my oldest son’s wedding in TX three years ago, to accommodate three families. That was like a mini-reunion since at the time 5/7 children were living out of state. When we split the cost up to stay in this three bedroom home it was cheaper than a hotel. Talk to everyone you know about the type of place you are looking for. Use airbnb.com as well as the alternatives: vrbo, vacationrenter, etc. Read online reviews and beware, sometimes a place with its online reviews can be deceptive. For example, my girlfriend Melanie just told me about a place that had a 5/5 star review which she rented for her large extended family of 50+ to stay for two nights for her family reunion. It turned out to be horrible, with a bathroom missing a door, dead mice in the kitchen, and a live snake! Turns out, as a hunting lodge, it was 5 stars, but as a vacation rental it had only 1 star. So if a place bills itself as two kinds of places, do a search to find reviews of it using both terms.
3. Instead of catering the meals, have everybody on own for breakfast and lunch, then have dinner altogether. Assign groups to make the dinner together so everybody gets a turn helping make dinner. For us it was natural to have each married couple take a night of fixing dinner, since there were four married couples (my husband and I, then three of my children with each spouse). I assigned the unmarried children to help the couples with children. If you go this way, make sure you give space in the schedule for the out-of-town people to go shopping or to make an online order for delivery, so they can get food for their menu plan. The assigned people were in charge of shopping, cooking, serving, and cleaning up after.
4. Alternate activities between staying at homebase and going out. This is especially important if you have toddlers and babies. For us, on Day 1 and Day 3 we went out to places in the morning. Day 2 and Day 4 we stayed home in the morning at home base.
5. This goes with point #3, build plenty of margin into the schedule so people don’t feel they are running a race from 8 AM until 9 PM. Again, this is especially important if you have babies and toddlers. Starting the activities at 10, 11, or noon is better, as well has having breaks in between activities.
6. Have adult children pay their own way for attractions, and keep the attractions cheap. Scout out coupons online for the attractions you want to attend for a group discount. One of my sons found us tickets to Splash Summit in Provo UT for $10 each. We went on Day 1 and had so much fun!
7. Find free stuff to do, things like going to city parks, especially those that have especially big, unusual, and/or extensive playground structures, hikes, picnics, university attractions, or playing board games. We went up the canyon for one afternoon and to the Bean Museum another afternoon. The other day activities were board games. Asking your friends in your local area of fun free things for a group to do or doing an online search will most likely generate answers. There’s always letterboxing as well, which can involve hikes too as you go to the places where the letterbox is.
8. Do a family history treasure hunt in the home with family artifacts, including family photos. You could use family photos and mementos that you have and family members bring. You could also or instead, do a scavenger photo hunt at a place that has meaning for the family. Have the clues involve family history memories of buildings where people lived, met, and and/or worked. For us it was natural to use the BYU campus, since so many of us (back to my grandma and my parents and aunts and uncles, as well as some of my children and nieces and nephews) have gone there for school, other activities, and the MTC (Missionary Training Center, which is part of BYU’s campus). I had a lot of fun writing the clues. My parents met at BYU, and then my husband and I met at BYU, so I put the buildings where we met as some of the buildings my children had to take photos of.
9. Have a night with the older generation (grandparents) sharing stories of ancestors to inspire courage and sacrifice. I invited my parents to share ancestor stories involving the Mormon pioneer trek. My dad shared stories of our ancestors William and Jane James who were in the Willie Handcart Company. Then my mom talked about Luman Andros Shurtliff, who lived in Ohio and walked to Kirtland Ohio to hear the prophet Joseph Smith speak. It was on that trip that he got baptized and experienced the Holy Ghost revealing to him a confirmation of his belief in the Church and the prophet Joseph Smith. He also received a miraculous healing as he walked home. His conversion story is here, towards the end, in an article by Elder Loren C. Dunn.
10. Have a night sharing family stories and memories of the living family members. This always elicits so many “I never knew that happened!” exclamations from me. What can I say, a mother of 7 can not be with every child for every waking moment of the day, protecting them from harm and mischief. If the stories are already well-known, you could have family members act out the stories. You could also spread out some family mementos including art done by family members, especially from when they were little. I thought about doing this but ran out steam in my preparations. Maybe next time.
11. Have a family talent show, or singalong around the campfire. If your family is especially into performing, this can be a night that is separate from #7. If not, you might combine it with #7. A karaoke machine could be helpful with this if your family members like to sing, or a guitarist or keyboardist. Talents don’t have to be musical, they can be skits, dancing, poetry recitation, sharing arts and crafts, or even just inspiring thoughts. I had grand plans do do this but we were in a heat wave and it just seemed too hot to gather round a fire, even in the evening, so we didn’t. Oh well, maybe next time!
12. Take a family photo. I almost forgot to do this! If I had remembered to put it in the schedule that I published before the reunion AND gotten a commitment from every family member, with an appointed photographer in place it would have been better. Then we would have had just one photo with everyone there. I wouldn’t have had to scramble and take two family photos to get everyone, because some people had left for work, sleep, or other activities. (That is the downside of doing a reunion where not everyone has to travel long distances to be there, or where you are not in some secluded place, some of the people will continue to do some of their regular schedule or run errands while you are having the reunion, then gather with you in their down time.) Anyway, at least I got two that when combined show everyone. Can you imagine being the Duggars of the Bates and attempting to get a group photo of those super-sized families?
13. Have a picnic by a natural source of water. A very shallow stream is a safe natural wonder attraction for big and little children and so invigorating when you wade in it.
14. This point only applies if you are have extended family in the same area as where you are gathering: have bookend days, the day on either side of the event, where family members attending the reunion can connect with family beyond the family that the reunion is for. The generation above and/or cousins.
15. Play board games. I know I said that in Point #5 but it’s such a great free idea (if you already have the games) that it deserves its own mention. Even if you don’t have the games and choose to buy them it’s an inexpensive way to help a crowd have fun and connect. You could also borrow games from neighbors and friends. I’m not talking about the lame-o games from the 60s and 70s like Sorry! and Aggravation. I’m talking about games that involve lots of talking, namely getting-to-know you games and social deduction. I’ll have to do a separate post about this, but here are some names of those kinds of games for starters: Imaginiff, Loaded Questions, Likewise, Truth Be Told, Two Rooms and a Boom, Secret Hitler, Werewords, Chameleon, Moods, Resistance, and Coup.
Plus old-fashioned parlor games like Charades and any twists on that like Times Up and Reverse Charades. Usually a bunch of people in every family love word games, like
Bananagrams, Scrabble, Boggle and/or Word on the Street, Codenames, and Taboo. Those last three are great for a group because you can have teams of any size. You can even get a free print-and-play copy of Two Rooms and a Boom here. It’s also a game you can play with a big group.
Here is our loose schedule/recap to show how my suggestions above played out. I purposefully paced so it wouldn’t be too hectic of going from activity to activity with no margin. I didn’t want to feel like I needed a long summer nap by the time it was over.
Just remember that relatives usually enjoy more time than you think to chill and just chat. Not every moment needs to be programmed with entertainment beyond visiting.
Day 1: Splash Summit Waterpark for all day. I left the waterpark early and fixed dinner for the whole clan, which was taco salad. Then the evening activity was listening to my parents tell ancestor stories, especially of their Utah pioneer ancestors. We topped it off with homemade ice cream.
Day 2: We played board games for the daytime: Secret Hitler, Code Names and Catan. Then the evening was up Provo Canyon for a picnic by a stream. We had a birthday party for my son and his girlfriend, with a watermelon birthday cake, a tradition for him. Their birthdays are a year and five days apart. It started to rain so we left early at 7 and went to our respective lodging spots for the night. That was a good thing, to give some margin. My married daughter and her brother just younger than her stayed up till midnight talking.
Day 3: For daytime we went to BYU’s Bean Museum (free) and then some went to the BYU Creamery for lunch. Even though it was supposed to be a day where we were gone until evening, the consensus was people were too tired so we cut those activities short and went back to the house and played Carcassone.
Yay! More board game time! Carcassone is such a fun game! See my review here. I have had it for over two years and finally played it. In the evening we had sharing family stories and memories sitting on the front lawn while the sun set. Like I mentioned above, many memories that my children shared elicited the response from me “I don’t remember that!” I have a feeling that is common for most moms of a lot of children. I remembered to take family photos that evening before we went to bed.
Day 4: We played another board game for the daytime. We are big into social deduction games. Currently the favorite is Blood on the Clockwork Tower. This was our second time playing it as a family, the first being for last New Year’s Eve. It’s hard to find and buy but totally worth it as many people consider it the best social deduction game ever. It sounds creepy but there’s no more blood and gore than in Secret Hitler or Murder in the Dark. It’s a role-playing social deduction game. In it, everybody gets a secretly assigned role, like washerwoman, detective, ravenskeeper, watchman, and the demon. The characters are divided into two sides, the good guys and bad guys. The bad guys are the demon and the minion, the good guys are the townsfolk and the outsiders. Each role has special powers. If you are a good guy you are wanting to suss out the bad guys and if you are a bad guy you want to kill everybody. The games involves lots of acting and conversation. You can read the whole script here. You don’t all sit around a board to play. Everyone can be sitting on a couch with no table. The storyteller keeps the “board” which is really a box that opens like a book, in front of him, which could be a small table or shelf, to keep track of all the characters. The rest of the participants aren’t allowed to see inside. Then the rest of the game parts involve tokens to denote what role each person is. You can sit on chairs, or the floor, or couches and the storyteller passes around a bag for you to claim your token, then collects the tokens and keeps track of them in game box.
After dinner, we did our family photo scavenger hunt at BYU. We then gathered back at homebase for ice cream and talking until it was 11 after the grandchildren had been put to bed. We had a family prayer and that put our first official family reunion in the books!
The next day, it wasn’t officially a family reunion day, what with my oldest child departing with his wife on the airplane early in the morning, but some of us did gather again. So I got to squeeze in another game! We played Gardening Scrabble, which is soooo much better than regular Scrabble. My married daughter wanted to play Bananagrams which is also a favorite with my daughter-in-law but I couldn’t find it. So Gardening Scrabble it was. You get extra points if you make words that have to do with plants or gardening. Our board is below. Notice the words “toil,” “box,” which became boxy, “pegs,” and “calla.” All of those words got extra points for relating to plants and gardening. Each player gets three seed packets which each has a special power like the ability to make your word go up instead of down, duplicate any player’s score for one turn, or combine your tiles with another player’s. So fun!
Here’s a list of random things I learned about my family at the reunion. This shows how family reunions allow me to get to know my family members better.
-my children can still sing the Singin’ Smart Song Caps on the Map. This is a song that lists all the state capitols, a holdover from their homeschooling years. Of course that makes my mama heart happy!
-my daughter-in-law did the BYU Jerusalem Study Abroad program the winter 2017.
-my son’s roommate when he lived in Austin TX, fresh out of college with a new job, before he got married, was Benjamin Pachev, who I read about it int his article here, a few years ago. I think he’s the second-youngest person to graduate from BYU, at age 17. He was going to graduate school when he was my son’s roommate. He comes from a runner family, as detailed in the article I linked. My son said he ran something like 10 miles a day.
-one of my daughters-in-law likes Mikarose dresses and was able to buy two for $15 each while she was here
-my married daughter, Virtue, had a roommate at BYU-I who thought she was younger than she was and would gloat about falling in love, telling my daughter she had no idea of love, not knowing that my daughter had had a few boyfriends already. This same person thought my daughter was a sophomore when she was about to graduate.
-my son, Honor, invited us to join his wife, his two little children and him on a cruise next spring. They are going to pay for it in exchange for some babysitting on the cruise!
-my son’s girlfriend loves to play in the rain and swim
-my firstborn is going to a 3 day convention soon, solely devoted to playing Blood on the Clock Tower
-my third son, Venture, remembers to this day the time he was walking our big family dog, around age 9. The dog started running causing my son to fall down and get scraped up. For some reason his oldest brother, Valor, was walking home from something on the same sidewalk and rushed to the rescue. He picked him up, helped him home, and bandaged him up.
So there you go! I hope you take what works for you above and plan your own family reunion that reflects your family’s budget for time, money and interests. The important thing is to foster connection, which can happen in infinite ways. God wants you to have family reunions so go forth and enjoy them!
*Here’s why I picked families and vacation as the themes for August in my devotionals ebook.
- I have a Hansen family branch, my father’s mother’s line, that has had a family reunion the first Saturday in August every year, (except 2020) for over 40 years. For over 15 years we enjoyed a small waterslide that went down a hill in the backyard of my dad’s cousin, as well as a zipline, plus volleyball as our reunion activities, accompanied by potluck food. Then we stopped having the reunion there. We’ve had it at other cousins’ backyards, at city parks, up the canyon, and most recently at Golden Corral, a restaurant. One year we had this giant waterslide that my children enjoyed, as shown above. We were living in AZ at the time. It was so fun to be there when everybody we knew in AZ was back in school.)
2. It’s the month of my wedding anniversary, which is our family’s birthday, so we always have a family birthday party, in person for those who live around here, along with a Zoom meeting for the ones living out of town. (The way we celebrate changes every year. Here are examples here, here and here. Sometimes I make a slide show of family pictures to share with everyone in the Zoom meeting. Sometimes we play Jackbox or other games in Zoom.)
3. It is the month when many families have one last “hurrah” of vacation or family time before school and regular, responsible routines start in August or September
4. When we lived in Layton our church always had a family-themed activity in August
5. My parents’ church in Highland for years, maybe they still do, called August “Family Month” and had some major family activity as well, similar to what we did in Layton.
Happy family reunioning!
