Chatting during the reunion.
A Day Zero Project goal of P.J.’s has been completed!
Goal completed: Organize and hold a family reunion.
Date completed: August 13, 2011.
Number: 85 (remember, these goals will not all be done in order. It’s a random list where the numbers actually are).
Description: Basically, I wanted to start something for a family reunion. The idea was to get the family from my mother’s and father’s side of the family to come together for a reunion. As anyone who has tried to do these knows, it isn’t easy to try and get all schedules together. But with the help of my mother, my brother, their significant others and a few others, we pulled it off.
Why I wanted to do it: I won’t like — in the past, I haven’t always been the most “family oriented” person. Not that I didn’t love family, but that I’ve missed some family functions and gatherings. And, to be honest, it was time to start seeing family at something other than weddings and funerals. Too, a bit before my father died, he had said that family is important (he was a fan of gatherings such as this) and said I needed to make sure to find a way to start getting the family together (he always thought we should have a yearly reunion). So, that was fuel for me to go at it.
How I did it: A few years ago, I got talking about this with my cousin Lauren. She kind of gave me a push to see if I could get it going. The push that was needed was to see if we could get our family (who, for the most part, is in the Philadelphia area and New Jersey). She said she and her family would come and build from there. It took longer than expected as I realized you couldn’t do this in two months. So we skipped a year and aimed for this year. We got some initial feedback on everything and then finally came up with a date.
Considering we were using a city park in Oneonta, we needed to reserve the pavilion. But, you can’t do that until March, so we needed to wait until then to make sure of the date. When that was done, we put it all in motion. Figured the food, some other things and started getting headcounts. We have a Facebook group just for this (which I’ll keep for future reunions) and some family members have connected. With the help of the family in this area (a shout out, of course, goes to my mother, brothers Pat and Joe, sister-in-law Jenn and Pat’s favorite dudette (inside joke) Dawn), we got everything together we needed. Family from afar came up with help as needed, some wonderful food and an amazing time.
This reunion, in my eyes, was a resounding success. I’ve learned a lot (I will be doing another blog post this week about the reunion and will expand there), but with nearly 50 people there, it’s something I know I want to do again, yearly if possible. There are things that will be fixed and tweaked, but knowing more now, I hope the event will just continue to grow!
About P.J.’s Day Zero Project: Day Zero is a project where people come up with 101 things to do over 1001 days. I started the project on Oct. 10, 2010 with an anticipated finish date of July 8, 2013. Goals will not be revealed until they are completed. A private list is at the Day Zero website and the list will be made public upon completion of the project. It’s my thoughts that if things are kept private, should I not do them, change or find a way around it, I’d only be cheating myself.
Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.
Well done PJ!