This is the next segment of planning of camping family reunion. The nice thing about this discussion is a chance I have too milk off the knowledge and experience of family members. Now I can share with you what they do. Perish the thought that I should come up with my ideas by myself. I’m against that.
Here are some ideas of how to occupy one’s time while doing a camp out with the family.
– Prior to getting together my extended family will have each major family group take a turn hosting reunion. They are responsible for scheduling the events, designing and selling the family picture as well as giving out food assignments for the main meal on Sunday.
– For my family, there is an annual fee to contribute to the improvement of the campsite. This helps provide a reliable water source and to improve the roads and other accommodations.
– Some money is also set aside to be used by the family in charge to buy some necessary items for the reunion that year. Such items might include the discs that people shoot at for gun practice.
– Here are some of the events I remember being in on the schedule for the annual reunion. Friday morning golf, Friday afternoon relaxing, Friday evening family members visit each other’s campsites.
– Saturday morning skeet shoot, afternoon is games such as races or balloon toss. Later comes the auction. Saturday evening is the talent show, followed by a dance.
– Sunday morning the sharing time takes place. Sometimes the event may be a religious service. Most of the time we share memories about a particular family member) Sunday noon we have of big potluck, Sunday afternoon cousin meeting.
– Monday morning , many of us will break camp or relax before breaking camp.
– Camping is a great opportunity for people to sit around and enjoy each other’s company. It is also nice that there are some good cooks in the group.
– Since our union represents people that cover more than one time zone, we have to decide in advance which clock will be used for the starting time of each event.
– The workload of hosting of reunion is not so bad when the labor can be distributed among multiple people. And different members of the family have different skill sets that they excel at that make them a natural candidate for specific tasks.
– For our particular reunion, we usually have a theme every year. One year, It was superheroes, another was cartoon characters. This provides a rich variety of fun for decorating the camps and determining this skits and songs that will take place during the talent show.
– One thing I miss was something that we used to do more in my youth. We used to sing around the campfire. It is a moving experience to be sitting out under the stars and hearing young voices singing in the night. When my part of the family were in charge of the reunion one year I tried to pull together a campfire sing-along. I had the words to the songs printed, but I neglected to prepare for someone to play the music. It is also important to have a strong light source, so people can read the words of the songs. It didn’t work as well as I wanted, but if I try to do it again. I’ll be better prepared to what to do to make it more of a success. There are some very good singers in my extended family.
If you have enjoyed your family reunions that are either camp related or not, please feel free to share your ideas of what you do with your family. The rest of us will be very greedy to hear additional fun ideas to implement for our own reunions. Thanks.
