–We had our family reunion yesterday. In the rain. At my house. We’ve been doing this reunion of my mom’s side of the family for almost thirty years. In that time we’ve been rained on three times. A pretty good record. Except that two of those times were the last two times I hosted the party. I told them yesterday I was never having the reunion at my house again. I think they knew I was kidding. Uh, I think I was kidding. I mean I love having company. That’s one of the reasons we decided to build on our gathering room, but we built decks too. I was hoping to use those decks and the yard, but the rain poured down all day. When I went out to look at the rain guage this morning, it was all the way full. Six inches. Now I’m not sure if I’d emptied it after the last rain, so it might have had an inch already in there, but then I’m not sure how much ran over after the guage was full to the top. I am sure we had a lot of rain. And my cornhole game boards looked very lonely out in the yard. I got Darrell to give me the game several years ago and I drag it out whenever we have company and either the weather doesn’t cooperate like yesterday or we’re too busy chasing babies to play. Maybe next time.
–We did have a good time visiting with all the family. Our number was down because of the rain and people wondering if they might have to sit on top of each other at my house. Some of them didn’t know about my new gathering room. So those who came were relieved to see my multiple couches and chairs. Even so, we could have used more room, but I’m not ready to knock any more walls down right now. We did miss my son and his family, but it’s a long drive from WV with a car full of kids. Maybe next year when it’s at somebody else’s house and it’s not raining like you’re thinking maybe you didn’t notice somebody building an ark in their backyard.
–Everybody I’ve heard from says they had a great time at the American Fiction Writers Conference in Denver. My book, Summer of Joy, that was one of five finalists for Book of the Year in the long contemporary category didn’t win. Oh well. It was fun being a finalist and since I wasn’t going to get to go, I had practice writing an acceptance speech for my agent to read – just in case. Maybe someday I’ll get to celebrate a win, but right now I’ll keep celebrating having the chance to win. Even better than that I’ll keep celebrating every time I see one of my stories in book form ready to move out into the world and get picked up by readers. It was a lot of fun meeting some of those readers at the National Quartet Convention and having reading friends come by the Patriots’ booth to talk to me. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there on Friday and Saturday, but my daughter and son-in-law don’t get home very often. So it was a great weekend for visiting.
–The picture up top is all the family who came. That’s one of the requirements at our reunions. If you eat the meal, you gotta take the picture. You can see the wet floor of the deck. What you can’t see is my son holding my dog, Dub’s leash to keep him for getting in the picture with his cone protective collar on. He was bumping into everybody with that thing. My other dog, Oscar, is front and center trying to lick anybody who will hold a hand down to him. Or toes. My little five-month-old grandbaby, Raegan, loves the dogs and thought it was funny getting her toes licked. I’m the one in the coral pink shirt squatted down by Mom who’s sitting in the front. I’ll post a few more of the reunion pictures on my Facebook page.
–Hope if any of you are having family gatherings you enjoy the fun of keeping up family connections. And that it doesn’t rain on your picnics!!