family talent show

My sister and I hosted the family talent show. Earlier in the day I had added Annika's name to the sign up sheet: Annika Larson, solo dance performance to "If I could turn back time" and then I told her I was excited to see the act she had signed up for. We laughed hard, and then started thinking about our family and imagining other family fake acts.

So in between the real acts we announced things like, "And now Uncle Wayne will clog to Elvira." or "Next up, Cousin Matt will share with us a collection of his own love poems and sonnets." The beauty is that it was hard to know what was an actual act and what was made up. I mean, who knew Ella could hula hoop and twirl a baton at the same time?
And who knew Mark could play the ukulele?
Or that Ryan and Kristina had memorized the entire "Who's on first" routine?
Or that Kevin had signed Ivar and himself up to perform "How big is Ivar? So big!" in front of the whole family...
Or that the Harrington's would perform the kinder classic Tony Chestnut?

cinco de mayo

Just kidding. We didn't really celebrate Cinco de Mayo. But we did have a bee hive pinata that my cousin Elsa made with some great grands at the beginning of the week. The pinata was adorable...it was hard to watch it get beat up.

Easter Egg Hunt

Wednesday was Easter at the family reunion. We had a huge egg hunt, and each kid was given a bag with their name on it in a color that corresponded to their age. This way "everyone with a yellow bag" got to hunt for the eggs first, then the green bags were sent out and after a while everyone was looking for eggs together. It was a great idea, unless you were Sonna and somehow ended up with a green bag. I can't remember which color she really wanted, but it wasn't green!
Sweet Isaiah shared his treat with great Grandma.

a rocket show

After the 4th of July parade we went down to the big field to blast off rockets. My cousins Steve and Richard have always put on a good show, but this year was bigger and better than ever. Steve supplied the rockets and after each blast off all of the kids would run around the field with the hopes of catching it on its descent.

the christmas pageant

Every day of this reunion was a different holiday, and Tuesday was Christmas. We acted out the nativity story, as we do every Christmastime...but not all of the family is able to gather each December so this was a really big cast. This was a special year too...we had a two Mary's, two Joseph's, two Baby Jesus', a chicken, a pig and a mosquito.