The Activities

flickr *

Some of you have seen the visual aid of putting big and little rocks and sand in a jar to illustrate to concept of time management or prioritizing tasks or activities.

Once you decide what you want to do, you put the big rocks in the jar first. This assures they will get done first and that there will be time and space in the schedule for that to happen.

One thing we have learned with our family is that two major events per day is good. Lesser activities can be sandwiched in, but for the most part we don't plan a whole big itinerary of things to do. The grandies are still young and the attention span varies greatly. Coupling that with individual interests and ages, choices become very important. What we did not want to happen was having people sitting around saying, "Well, what do you want to do?" Then someone else saying, "I don't care, what do you want to do." Times 19. It is such a time waster...you know the scenario. This can be avoided if you all ponder these things and then you make specific plans in advance. I know this is very intuitive for some people but for a lot of people it isn't.

So this is how we broke it down into the big rocks and smaller rocks that were optional activities that filled in the gaps. Both sizes are listed on the rocks in the jar above and will bring back specific memories to the family.

As a side note here, our family regards meals as big rocks and whatever anyone was doing at the time a meal was served...they stopped that activity and came to the family meal. The exception to this was breakfast where each individual family got up, got dressed and ate and were ready for the day by 9:00 am.

Grampa and Great Grandma: were in charge of the hikes around the area. They both love this and the kids and some of the adults enjoy it too. Jim went out and scouted the area for simple hikes and had a plan of where and how far they would go each day they went out.

He made sure that the hikes did not go by any streams which had turned into torrents of white water rivers, due to the snow melt and run off. He made sure several adults went along on the hikes to insure the safely of the kids.I was amazed at Jim's mom once again. She will be 85 in November and her abilities and stamina are astonishing for her age and a hip replacement. She was also a great helper in the kitchen.

Jim and I: were in charge of our family meeting. In our church we have (FHE) family home evening every Monday night. We planned this activity in the morning on Monday to kick off the Reunion in a more formal way then just starting in on a bunch of activities. We also planned for some time capsules for the kids and Laura helped on that too. We also arranged for and planned the family formal picture taking. We took lots of photos, as in hundreds between all the cameras, at the reunion and I have edited most of them that we are keeping and using. Laura has also worked on that too for a separate project. They are making us a photo book for our anniversary of the reunion!

Missy and Chris: were in charge of bringing board games, Chris did a Lego Challenge with anyone who wanted to participate and Missy made Pretzel Bites from scratch so any of the kids that wanted to could participate. We all enjoyed scarfing them down. Chris also helped with the electronic stuff like hooking up cables to the big screen TV for viewing the home movies, etc. Everyone helped in the kitchen and I think Missy did more than her share. And they also headed up family scripture study every night.

Jennifer: was in charge of the crafts for the kids and the moms. This was a big job requiring a lot of prep and bringing a lot of things. The Moms all made paper banners that said Happy Birthday and we also made paper flowers. The kids made Father's Day gifts for their Dads and Grampa.

Lowell: was in charge of the Family 2011 Sundance Film Fest we did and he did the major amount of the editing for all of that. Both Lowell and Chris starred in their film and Jim and Chris did a lot of the picture taking, transferring things to computers and flash drives, etc. Lowell uploaded the movie they made to Youtube and it is a real treasure.

Laura and Robert: were in charge of the Family Birthday Party. They really wanted to do this as their kids always miss everyone's birthday and vice versa. Laura made party bags for all the kids (specific to their ages and interests) and Robert was in charge of the games at the party and they both put out a fantastic ice cream sundae bar for all to enjoy. The party was a lot of fun. The singing was outstanding!

All of the kids: planned a 43rd anniversary celebration for Jim and me on the last day of the reunion. They cooked breakfast for us and gave us balloons and presents. It was definitely a big rock and we appreciated it very much! Definitely left a beautiful heart print ♥ on both of us.

Everyone worked really hard and did their best~that usually brings good results.

There are pictures and more details on all of this but these are the major things that people came prepared to take charge of on selected days and times. They will be in an upcoming installment on the Family Reunion. Part 1 was also published today and can be found right below this post. Click on Older Post.

*I sincerely hope that the person who took this picture of the rocks in the jar will not feel like suing me for using her 2006 flickr photo to illustrate a concept. Or for altering it by adding picnik.com text. Yikes...I hope she realizes we spent all our $ on the reunion so there is little to be gained. Hopefully she will be flattered and will grant me her tender mercies for borrowing this!