Rachel Ramblings: Reunion '17

I'm so excited for this post.

If you don't know, I love my family, especially my nieces and nephews. Everyone else is a necessary extra.

My family is blended. If you don't know what I mean, my mom had two boys before she met my dad, and my dad had a daughter when he met my mom. Then they had my sister and I. So technically I have a half sister and two half brothers (but it's weird to say that, I've always seen them as full siblings. Plus I would get smacked on the back of the head if I ever referred to them as "half").

My brother Alan lived in England for the past 2 1/2 years with his family. Stranton and I dated in that time, so they hadn't met. My older sister Chrissy started dating a guy named Jarrett that hadn't met Alan. AND Alan and his wife Erin had a baby boy while they were in England that some of the family hadn't had a chance to meet. (I got to meet him because I flew across the world because I'm the best sibling ever. And there may or may not have been a Harry Potter play to entice me) We also had some unfortunate events in our family the past year or so. So I saw that we needed to not only get together to have a bunch of people meet for the first time, but we really needed to be together to support each other.

So I pitched an idea of having a family reunion. Family reunion is a very generous term, all of us are pretty broke so we decided to keep it here in Phoenix and just go to each other's houses. But I did what I could to make it as reunion-ish as possible.

First I had these AWESOME shirts made

Yes I included everyone's last name in the reunion title haha. The back had funny nicknames and our ages of the reunion. (Except James, he is 1, not 2 😬). If the "Safety Kids" part confuses you, send me a message and I'll explain 😊)

Instagram: @shayemaymay made our shirts!

I really wanted to get everyone to get to know each other, so I invented a Jeopardy game all about each other. Categories included were: hospital visits, favorite songs, places around the world you wanna go to, etc. I'm gonna be honest, it was more fun than I thought everyone would have. In the end, the girls and boys teams tied.

You can't really tell in this picture, but I'm Alex Trebek, and that board is the Jeopardy board. Everyone had to guess who I was talking about with the clue I would give.

I think this was my favorite part. Alan was in England doing his PhD. He moved his family back to the states after he graduated but before his graduation ceremony. So his wife Erin asked if we could do a surprise graduation ceremony for him at the reunion. Little did she know, that my sister and I like to go all out.

So we surprised him with a cap and gown as soon as he walked in

My sister Reanna did a freaking awesome job with the programs. Zoom in, they're my favorite. "Listed in alphabetical order" "valedictorian" she kills me.

I made a super cheesy video for everyone to watch. If you're bored enough, watch it here.

We even had a streaker 😱😂