Family Reunion 2010

80 years ago, this year, my Grandma and Grandpa Ross were born.60 years ago, this year, my Grandma and Grandpa Ross got married.

So this year, we had a Ross Family Reunion. The Ross Family (which is my mom's family) lives all over the globe: Rwanda (my cousin works over there for Compassion), Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, Virginia, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, and California. It's hard to figure out the best location for a reunion. The last one was in the DFW, Texas area because a good percentage of the family happens to live in this metroplex. At my Grandma's suggestion, this year's reunion was held in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma. No one in our family actually lives in Oklahoma (except my Grandpa's sister and her family and they all came to the reunion too, which was fun). But I think it ended up being a pretty good central location.

My family left on Friday, June 11 around 3pm. Keith had a dentist appointment that afternoon, so we headed out as soon as he got home. Thankfully we qualified to use the HOV lanes to get us through Dallas' Friday rush hour and only got held up north of Dallas for 20 minutes or so. The trip is exactly 3 hours, which is not bad. We didn't stop once. The last 30 minutes or so, Cooper was getting grouchy because he hadn't taken an afternoon nap and refused to sleep in the car for some reason. Thank goodness for his crazy "Singing Babies" movie. I had prepared Garrett for the possibility that he would have to give up his DVD player if Cooper did not cooperate in the car, so Garrett graciously did so (he's not always gracious, but he was in this moment. Partially because he knew we were getting close and he was going to see Nana and Pawpaw who he hadn't seen in 7 months.) The movie kept Cooper quiet until we arrived at the hotel where our reunion was held.

It was a fun weekend of seeing family members we hadn't seen in a long time. Or in some cases, hadn't met yet. Like my cousin's husband who is originally from England and has a cool accent. Along with some new babies that have been added to the family in the past several years. My personal favorite part of the weekend was our family's Sunday morning service. In case you aren't aware, my family has a number of preachers in the mix. At the reunion alone we had 6 of them. Of course the honors of the Sunday morning sermon went to my Grandpa. He did an excellent job and then we went on to have prayer time for my uncle Mike who has cancer. It was wonderful and humbling to see him at the reunion, knowing that he had to travel all the way from California to be there and knowing that his health is fragile at the moment. (Please pray for him and my aunt Debbie if you think of them.)

Mike is the one in the white shirt. I took some snapshots of the weekend, but not near enough.

It's one thing to participate in church services with your church family who you grow to love over the years. It's a completely different and unique experience to have church and prayer with your blood-family.

My family along with my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, left Sunday afternoon to head back home. They spent the following week with us and were here for Cooper's birthday party. I promise to post about the party and share pictures soon. We've had a busy couple of weeks!