Every year since 1964 (I think), the descendants of Mary Verna and John Leonard Davis (my great-grandparents) have held a campout over Memorial Day Weekend. This year we had record attendance, 550 people out of a possible 749. It is truly incredible to go camping with that many people and know that you are all family! Have you ever shared an inside joke with 749 other people? We have a lot of them. Here are some pictures to help you get an idea of just how many people we're talking about here.
This is the second generation of the family. These are all of my grandpa's living siblings and their spouses. My wonderful grandma is the one front and center.
This is the third generation, my mom and all her cousins. No spouses here, there are 76 of them without the spouses.
And here is the fourth generation, me and my cousins and second cousins. Again, no spouses, there are a lot of us without them. We didn't do a picture of the 5th generation, but I think there are around 150 of them.
We also did a group picture, but I don't have a copy of that one. Since we were all in it, there was no one to snap the picture for me.
Honestly, Memorial Day is one of my favorite holidays because I get to spend it with so much of my family. We spend the weekend doing some things with our "immediate" families, like eating wonderful dutch oven food and sitting around the campfire, and some things with the whole family. Every Saturday we have a carnival for the kids, generally we go swimming (this year we took pictures instead) and then Saturday night we have a dance. On Sunday we all have church together, the little kids practice a play (directed by all the missionaries who've returned during the past year) and in the evening we all get together to watch the play, sing songs and play family feud (during which Mark Garfield cheats and the guys win....every year).
This year, my brother Matt was one of the play directors. Their play was called Davitar and was a great spin-off on Avitar in which the Vellingas (the descendants of my Grandpa's sister Arlene) tried to kill us off because the campground was getting too crowded. Don't worry, we won. And the war diminished our numbers so we don't have to worry about space issues anymore. It was very funny. We all have a lot of fun teasing each other.
There's so much more I could say, but this post is long enough. The point is that I have the most incredible family. I am so grateful to my grandparents and my great-grandparents for raising such amazing people and for keeping us all together!
1 comment:
I wish I could have made it this year! I'm glad you had so much fun and that so many people made it for the pictures!
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