For as long as I can remember, we have had a bi-annual Christensen Family Reunion during the Summer. My dad is one of 9 children, and I am one of the 56 grandchildren of Merlon and Roma Christensen. We have always been close as a family. Most of us grew up together and have lived close for most of our lives. After the last family reunion in 2015, there was some talk that maybe it was time to stop doing them because the family was just getting too big and the original 9 siblings now all had grandchildren of their own. No decision was ever made.
Fast forward to the beginning of 2017. No one had been put in charge of the reunion, and we weren't sure if it was even happening. After talking to several of my aunts, uncles and cousins, we found out that there was definitely enough interest to continue doing them. In fact, my Aunt Sharon said that she felt very strongly that we needed to keep doing them for at least a few more years until the last grandchildren had left home. Her 15 year old son, Jay, confided in her that the Family Reunions were some of his favorite memories of his whole life, which shows how influential they have been for him and for all of us. By that point though, someone really needed to start planning and getting everything together or we would simply run out of time. My cousin, Melodie, and I decided that if we wanted it to happen, we needed to step up and plan it.
In February, we started trying to find a place to have it. Usually it was held in Idaho where many members of the family live. That made it convenient for them, and kept costs low since people could stay at the homes of the families in the area. It wasn't really going to work this time since Melodie and I both live in Utah. Plus, after several years of the same thing, we thought something different might be fun. Unfortunately, we were really late trying to find some place to rent. We wanted to keep costs down so that no one would be hurting financially trying to come, which made it even tougher to find a place. My Relief Society holds their annual Women's Retreat at a lovely place called Heber Valley Camp. I thought it would be the perfect place because it was relatively inexpensive and had all the facilities we would need. Unfortunately, when I looked at the schedule, everything was completely full. We spent several weeks thinking of various options, and nothing seemed to be working out. One day in late February, I decided to check Heber Valley Camp again, and to my surprise a campground had opened up. I immediately called to inquire about it, and the sister missionary on the phone said that the campground had opened up just that morning, and we could have it. It was the perfect time and the perfect place! I felt like we had experienced a miracle... a tender mercy from a loving Heavenly Father that knew what this family needed. It gave me motivation to move forward and get to work planning this for our family.
Melodie and I met several times over the following months to put together a general outline of what we wanted to do. As it got closer, we started getting everything finalized and asking for help with various assignments. We have done these reunions enough that the general outline was pretty easy to put together. We assigned a different family to prepare each meal, and then assigned different tasks to various family members who we thought would enjoy and be good at certain things. Everyone was so willing to do anything we asked. It was amazing to see people step up and make our load lighter by helping so much. We were super excited with the schedule we came up with. We tried really hard to ensure that each group (adults, teens, children) had plenty of things to do, and made sure that we included all of the Christensen favorites (TDQ's [trivia], Dibby Dibby Dip, volleyball, etc.) Since it was the year of what would have been my Grandpa Merlon's 100th birthday, we also planned an FHE birthday party celebrating his life and posterity. That activity led to the main theme for the entire reunion. "What it means to be a Christensen." This is the schedule we created:
The hardest part of the planning was figuring out the costs and the food. Trying to plan food for 100 people for 3 days was a lot of work. There were some things that were easy to estimate, and others that I really had no idea (e.g. how many pounds of pork do you need to feed 100 people? I way overestimated, so I still don't know. Haha! ) Overall though, the planning went very smoothly. Melodie was there to consult with every step of the way. I have the need to be super organized, so I had schedules, meal plans, directions, cabin assignments, activity sign-ups, packing lists, etc. all arranged in my special reunion binder. It might have been overkill, but it made me feel calm to have it all at my finger tips and know exactly what would be happening. We sent out emails and Facebook posts every few weeks to keep everyone up to date. I even had Jonathon create a computer program that helped people calculate the costs for their family, and then allowed them to pay me directly through PayPal or Facebook, or gave them the option to mail me a check. It was amazing! He totally rocked the program, and it made the money situation so easy.
Finally, everything was ready to go except the food. The reunion started on Monday morning, and there was no way that we had refrigerator and freezer space to store that much food. Jonathon came up with a brilliant idea. We put in a Walmart Grocery Pick-up order to be ready at 8 am on Monday morning. The order contained all of the perishable food (milk, cheese, eggs, etc.) It was over $300 worth of food, and I didn't have to do any of the shopping for it. How amazing is that! I just ordered it all on the computer, pulled up to the store, and they loaded everything in my van. From there, I took it straight up to the camp to put in their huge walk-in refrigerator. Genius!
As for the non-perishable stuff, it was a lot more, so Melodie and I arranged to meet at Costco on Saturday to go shopping . Saturday morning, I received a call from Melodie that she had been put on bedrest because of a possible miscarriage. She was obviously worried about the baby and devastated to miss the reunion. I reassured her that she needed to take care of herself, and I could handle everything from here. It was a blow to have my right-hand co-planner out of commission, but her health was so much more important. I called up Mom H, and she, Chan, and Tiff helped me get all the food from Costco. It took 4 people and 3 huge shopping carts to get everything on my list. It completely filled my van. I am so grateful for their help! Luckily, we had a second van to get the Walmart order on Monday. With two vans completely filled with food, we were ready for the fun to begin!
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