Day #106 - Family Calendar

In writing a bit about family history in the last post, I began thinking about my own personal history. One of the greatest things my family does is a calendar each year. I have a rather large family and as it grows we see less of each other. There was a time when we would all go to dinner together or a movie, etc. but everyone's life begins to diverge into separate worlds and when we do get together it is more like we meet for a few hours and gather snippets of updates from everyone. Oh, some of us see more of each other then the rest of us, but for the most part it is more like a family reunion once a month or so.

I remember when we were children we would see our cousin's fairly often - then POOF - we didn't. I hate to think of that happening with my close knit family, but kids grow up and have families of their own and it is no longer feasible to get everyone together in one place as often as you would like.

One year for Christmas all the kids got together to brainstorm on what to get Mom and Dad. I am sorry to say I don't remember whose idea it was, but our parents had boxes of photos just dumped in a jumble. In the days of scrap booking this hardly seemed like a good idea, so someone snuck the boxes from their house and we all went through to sort the photos into stacks by sibling - there are 6 of us. Then we took our own stack of photos and scrap booked them for our parents into a photo album by age - oldest to youngest, baby photos to current time. It was one of those gifts you never forget giving. They were SOOOO SURPRISED and of course they bawled like babies.

The next year we decided to create a calendar of the family to add to the photo history we all started. Now, every year we create 12 new pages to add to our parents scrap book. We also decided to make ourselves calendars as well and it is a vibrant living history of our families lives. I always get two - one for my home and one for my office and I LOVE having it hanging there for me to look at every day. Plus it helps to remember B-Days, Anniversaries, peoples ages, etc.

I have a goal this year to call or mail a B-day card to my nieces and nephews. I called my 5 year old niece, Avery, on her B-day Jan. 5th to ask how it was going. "Horrible...I'm sick and Archer threw-up. My Birthday was cancelled". It was so FUNNY & endearing. I'm so glad I called.

This year Amy had the nerve to suggest we skip a year of calendaring. I think we have been doing it for about 8 years now (?) and it is a lot of work, plus we are always waiting until the last minute to get it done. I couldn't believe she would want to miss a year...then I wondered if everyone felt the same way...? Thankfully no one else jumped on THAT band wagon and we snuck it in under the wire in time for Jan. 1, 2011.

I was setting up my new cubicle at work today and trying to find just the right spot for my family. I hope we keep this tradition up for many years to come.

I Am Grateful,
HB

Diva Quote: "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it." Lewis Carroll