A Thailand Reunion

Yeah, yeah.  It's barely been a month since we got home from Thailand, but if you've been following along with this blog for the last few weeks, you may have gotten the impression that that trip was pretty life-changing for Ellie and I.  

And I honestly just can't stop thinking about it.   

 Not only was what we did pretty epic (the sight-seeing, the long days on the worksite, and the time we spent with locals), but  we also went with some pretty incredible people.   Those 21 young people were exactly the jolt I needed to wake up, shake me out of my comfort zone,  and give me hope for  the future of this world! They are a generation on the cusp of adulthood who gave up a huge chunk of their summer to be a part of something bigger than themselves.    The experience cracked open my heart and I feel like I have 20 new honorary sons and daughters (-1 from the total number, because one of those 21 actually is my daughter) that I want to keep in touch with! 

Since I've been home, I've had a deep desire to...

1) continue to foster friendships among the kids
2)  be a loving, supportive presence in their lives
3)  help them keep alive the spiritual nudgings they felt on the trip
4) continue fostering the feeling of relevancy I gained on the trip (#midlifeproblems)

I've floundered a bit in knowing how to pursue those desires and to redefine my role since coming home, but I'm here to share that I've successfully done two things so far: 

We hosted a Thailand reunion at our house (hopefully helping with desire #1)!  

We had a great turn-out--especially considering that 9 of those 21 people were from out-of state and 2 of them actually flew in for the occasion.

Hosting things at our house is often stressful for me (though not near as stressful as it was in Virginia), but I honestly loved every second of it.   I loved the chance to see their faces again...

And welcome them into our home...even if they all ended up gathering in Ellie's room, which she had not only not cleaned for the occasion, but she had not even made sure the corners of the fitted sheets were in place on her bed!

Haha.  Bare mattress aside,  I love these great kids.  Though they're more like young adults than kids.   Ten of them are high school graduates, two already have mission calls, another one started his papers right after the trip, and all of them were good-hearted and seeking to share their light.    

I love that they even Facetimed Jacob (our Thai friend and worksite interpreter) during the reunion.   It was great to see his face and remember what brought us all together in the first place. 

Right before  the reunion, I found out about an amazing Shutterfly coupon and decided to attempt to make a photo book for everyone before it expired.   Paul (the trip Dad) had offered to chip in half if I made a photo book and though creating photo books kind of stress me out, I went for it.   I knocked myself out for  a few days straight and created this....a hundred pages of memories! 

Design-wise it ended up being a bit of a disappointment, but it's done and that is an accomplishment itself for me, since I usually second-guess myself too much on these types of projects and never finish them.   Unfortunately they were delivered right AFTER the reunion, which meant I had to mail them to the people who live far away and hand-deliver them to anyone within about 20 miles of me.  

All but one of the books have now been delivered and I'm hoping, in some small way, that they're helping to accomplish desires #2,3, & 4 that I mentioned above.   I haven't heard much from anyone since receiving them, but, if nothing else, it was  a meaningful project for me. 💗

What's next to keep those desires alive?   I've got a few ideas, but we shall see.  

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Hepworth Family Reunion June 2022

Every summer the descendants of my maternal Great-Grandparents {Clarence Joshua and Rose Ellen Hepworth} hold a family reunion.  Clarence and Rose had 10 children--including 2 sets of twins--one of which is my grandfather! Of those 10 kids, most of them also had large families as well, meaning that Clarence and Rose have A LOT of direct descendants.   I've never attempted to count them up myself, but I hear that it's over 1000 these days.  

To keep the family reunion running smoothly for so many years, they take turns rotating through the descendants of each one of the original children of Clarence and Rose to be the host family.  The host family chooses the location and date, and plans all the details.    This year it was the descendants of  Fay and Florize Hepworth {my grandparents} that were the host family, which meant that my Mom and a couple of her sisters were the ones that had the reins.

As you know, my Dad's health had been very poor leading up to his death on July 13th.   This reunion took place on June 18th, which meant that things were pretty dicey at my parents' home during that time.   I wouldn't really call myself much of an event planner by nature, but I do hate to see an event fall by the wayside due to unfortunate circumstances, so I decided to step in and help make things happen. 

I created flyers, helped plan the food, planned some activities, collected the RSVPs, and answered questions from people interested in coming.   It felt a little crazy in the moment with all the other things going on in my life at that time (namely...my Dad's worsening health, a bridal shower I hosted the day before, the houseful of guests that were at our house that weekend to visit my Dad for Father's Day, and scrambling to get Ellie and Adam out the door for their summer activities), but I thought it came off beautifully! 

Two of my  aunts, my sisters, and some cousins stepped in and helped the details come together.   Here are some of the activities we did: 

1. Family trivia game garnered from information my sister, AnnaLisa, found in family member's obituaries found online.
2. Family bingo game (trying to find family members that have certain characteristics)
3. Food was homemade cafe rio salads that we provided.  The rest of the food was potluck style.  
4. We collected advice from people, then combined all of the tidbits of advice and created a document, which we shared afterward.  
5. A couple of my cousins brought some physical activities for the kids

 Here is a glimpse of who was there and how it turned out....

The reunion was held at the church right behind my parents' house, so we brought my Dad down for a bit.

For as distracted as I was, I felt like it all came together well and I loved the opportunity to get to know so many "long lost" cousins, which I'd never met before.  I'm also grateful my Mom got to connect and spend time with so many relatives before Dad passed!   Family is awesome! 
 

January 2018--Coming Home!!!

The most exciting thing that happened in January was right at the end of the month, but since it eclipses everything else, I'll start with that.  

On January 30th, Cami returned home from serving for 18-months as a missionary in the France Lyon Mission.  We hadn't seen her at all in that time, had only been able to communicate by email once a week, and had only talked to her a couple of times, so this was a HUGE deal and we were very excited to be able to spend time with her in person again!    

Here's the video of the big moment when we saw her for the first time at the airport:   

We had made signs for the occasion...

And invited immediate family to join us for the occasion...

It was soooooooo wonderful to be reunited again and we would have loved to have kept her all to ourselves....  

but we invited a few close friends to meet us at Cafe Rio, so that they could talk with her too!

After Cafe Rio, we took her to meet with the stake president where she was officially released as a missionary and got to take her tag off.  It was an emotional moment for her.   

After that we took her out for dessert at Magnolia (a funky new bakery in town)...

And ate up every moment we could with her.   

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Okay!  Now that we got that big excitement taken care of....here's the recap of the rest of the month.

In December our stake president reminded us that the temple would be closing for two years starting in March and that our time with a temple nearby was fleeting, so Glen and I made it a goal to attend weekly until it closed.   This was definitely a stretch in our busy schedule for us, but it ended up being such a happy blessing and we loved those weekly reconnections with God!

January, six years ago, is the month Spencer was diagnosed with AML. It's been six years, but I still always get a restless anxiety that kicks in each January as memories of all of that time flood back to me.   It gets a little less with each passing year, but it's still something that plagues me, so  I've decided that one way to address this anxiety is to do something meaningful.  I can't remember when I started (last year maybe), but I've decided that I will donate blood every January in Spencer's honor.  I have to be careful to take my iron pills to make sure they'll let me do it, but it's officially a tradition now that I hope to keep up for the long term! 

This is the jug of milk that made me cry right in the middle of the grocery store. 

On the missionary mom Facebook page, it's a thing to look for milk jugs that expire on the day your child is returning from their mission.   I saw this milk a good couple weeks before she was coming home and it unexpectedly made me cry.   I was soooooo restless right before she came home!  

And here are some more random pictures from January...

We finally raked our backyard...haha! 

This was a missionary youth activity the kids participated in and I helped a little with...

Loved that Rocky tried to jump in the photo with us!

And that was a super fast recap of January 2018!