Family Reunion Recap and My Next 5K

One of my goals for 2010 was to organize a family reunion. As I posted the other day, we had it on May 29th and I had so much fun. Yeah, it was a little overwhelming to plan and I stressed myself out over way more than I needed to, but it went really well and everyone had a great time. I hope you don’t mind me sharing the details and pictures with you all.

For starters, the decorations. I know I made things more difficult for myself by choosing to make the decorations instead of just buying them, but that’s me. I don’t know if I ever shared this, but I am a scrapbooker, so I had a lot of the supplies already on hand. Here is the banner I made using scrapbooking paper and my Silhouette machine:

Each letter was about 10″ tall – there were two strands that read “Wilkins Family”. The colors of the reunion were purple and white because my grandmother’s birthstone was pearl and my grandfather’s birthstone was amethyst. Yes, I love symbolism.

Closeup of the banner:

I had a table set up with pictures of my grandparents, their marriage certificate and pictures of their four children as well:

I also made labels for the water bottles. (See what I mean when I said I made things harder for myself???) You have to admit they were cute though

And of course, I made a cake By the time this picture was taken, it had already gotten smashed into the box and messed up, but you get the idea. The letters look blue in the photo, but they were purple to match the border.

The names on the leaves represent my grandparents (Edith and Alex) and their four children: Wendy, Kathy, Gordy, and Marty. Here are the four siblings reunited at the reunion for the first time in 21 years!

And here is a group shot of everyone that was at the reunion:

We had lots of fun….everything from volleyball:

to shooting water guns at each other:

There were photo albums filled with old (and recent) photos for everyone to look at and pass around:

There was even Tic Tac Toe! (I think mom won every time?!)

We had burgers, hot dogs, and chicken cooking on 3 different grills:

The park had these super cool bikes for the kids:

Babies got worn out:

Adults got worn out:

Most of the family stayed in town all weekend, so the activities didn’t end just because the actual reunion did. The next day we went to ride the bumper boats at the Shell Factory:

Everyone on the lake that day was from our family…it was an awesomely wet fun time!

Then the next day we went to the beach on Sanibel Island and had yet another fun, wet day!

and one more just because I think this is the cutest thing ever!!! This is my cousin Dustin and his baby, Landon.

So sorry for bombarding you with pictures. Between me and my cousins there were SO many pictures taken! You can see more on my facebook if this wasn’t enough

It was SUCH a fun weekend. I had never met Dustin or his wife and child…it was so awesome getting to know them. They are now wanting to move down here and I hope that they do! I had two other cousins from Texas come…I think I may have met them when I was a child, but I of course don’t remember so it was like meeting them for the first time. It was nice to also meet their families. I am glad that we had this…I think my grandparents would have been so happy to have seen (almost) everyone together again. At least, I’d like to think they were. Now onto some racing news!

My next race is going to be the Ft. Myers Track Club Membership Run 5K in 2 days:

The cool thing about this race is that just by participating, I will automatically become a member of the Ft. Myers Track Club.

Wait.

Did you just read what I wrote?

*I* am going to be a Track Club member. ME. The girl who couldn’t even walk one set of stairs without getting out of breath a year ago is now going to be an official member of a running club.

Pretty damn awesome, huh?

I’m still very cautious though. This will be my first 5K since I hurt my leg and hit all sorts of obstacles. I have only just now began to get back into it after having 3+ weeks of struggling, poor eating, and no running. So, I might walk a portion of the race (or the entire thing). I’m going to play it by ear and really ‘listen’ to my leg. My desire to stay injury free is faaaar greater than my desire to finish the race.

165.7 miles walked/jogged/ran since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 500)
49.5 miles biked since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 300)
(5) 5Ks finished since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 12)