McGugan Family Reunion

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu

I cannot believe that the McGugan family reunion has already come and gone. Wow. It seems like it just arrived, and with a whirlwind, we have already completed it.

I've been absent from my blog for awhile now. It has been over a full week since my last post, but I have good cause as to the delay. For the past six plus days I have been attending and participating in the McGugan family reunion.

What an experience! What an awesome experience! I married into the McGugan family on March 17, 2007. Because the family has a reunion every four (4) years, until this point I have been unable to meet the full extended McGugan family and participate in a McGugan family reunion. For months, I have been poking fun of the fact that I join the family when the reunion is practically in our back yard (Memphis), but missed out (wasn't part of Kelly's life then) on the Bermuda location four years ago. Memphis vs. Bermuda - why would they want to come here, I thought.

I didn't know what to expect. What would we do? In Memphis? What would the people be like? Four official days doing what? Would I enjoy it? I had even asked some of the family members I interacted with on facebook - What should I expect? They gave me clues like: lot of hugs, lots of talking, some drinking, laughs, etc. But what would that really look like, I asked myself.

Well, I was more than pleasantly surprised. What a great time!!!

The busyness and fun began on Thursday as most of the family arrived into Memphis. I would call Thursday the "meet and greet" session of the reunion. It was amazing how I recognized so many faces already through our facebook group page interaction. Family would walk up, I'd smile big, feeling like I knew them, but struggled to remember which name went with what face. We'd introduce ourselves, hug in an embrace, and let the socializing begin. My brother in law (Kevin) and father in law (Larry) cooked out ribs for us. Yum Yum! Great, homecookin BBQ to start the festivities.

Throughout the four official days of the reunion (Oct. 10 - Oct. 13), we ate together, laughed together, visited together, toured Memphis together, took hundreds of pictures together, and soaked up the time together. I didn't want the time to end with these folks, I now call family.

Here are some pictures from the event:

1. This is Jadis. I KNOW Jadis made more pictures than ANYONE over the entire event. Isn't he adorable. I'm seriously in love. He pokes his bottom lip out quite a bit and it just makes everyone melt. I think this picture here catching his personality a bit. I had a blast with Jadis!

2. Of course we have to take goofy husband/wife photos. It's very rare that you get a serious one of us both at the same time.

3. Every 4 years at the reunion, they take GENERATION pictures. All the folks from each generation get together and they take the generation shot. This is Kelly's generation. Rather than posting the nice smiley pic, I chose the silly one. This one is much more like themselves anyway!

4. And of course with every generation picture, there is an OUT LAW picture. These are all the "significant others" of the group above. They're lucky to have us, right? ;)

5. And last, but not least is a picture of the portion of the family I specifically married into. Pop is in the middle, sitting down. He makes up part of the generation that brings this entire group of folks together. Pop has two sons (both pictured here), my father in law (Larry) and Kelly's uncle Alan. The rest are composed of Alan's wife (Lisa), his kids (Jessica and Mathew), and Larry's kids (Kelly - my hubby, Kevin and his wife Leah), and his grandchild (Grace).

We've had quite a few offers to come visit them all over Canada and in Bermuda. I truly believe Kelly and I are going to take them up on these offers... let the planning begin. I can't wait to hangout with them all again!