50 years and counting!

So very early tomorrow morning, I leave for what is one of my favorite weekends of the year: Family Reunion! Labor Day weekend has always been a time of great joy and fun for me. I get to go spend 72 hours with some of the craziest and coolest people I know.

The McBride/Jones family reunion started 50 years ago this year and for some reason, God saw me fit to be apart of such a great family tradition. I come from the McBride side of the family. My grandmother's maiden name was McBride. Although I don't carry the McBride last name, I've always found myself closer to the McBrides than the Burges. I never got to know my grandfather Burge's side of the family very well.

Now I don't know the whole family history and I apologize, but from what I can gather, one of my great grandfather's siblings married a Jones and began an adventure that would span generations. I don't think any of them realized it would grow to this magnitude but I'm fully certain that they would be proud of what we've made it.

For me, family reunion has always been a celebration. We've lost many family members along the way but I believe we honor their memory by getting together just one weekend a year as a family. There are always new additions to the family every year. And it's cool to watch the generations progress since my generation (the great grandchildren) are getting married and having kids.

We get together every year at a church campground about 10 miles outside of Columbia, IN. We sleep in old cabins with uncomfortable mattresses and shower in water that smells like rotten eggs. But for the most part, none of us really care. We're all smelly, dirty and gross by the end of the weekend but it's the memories we create that count.

Some of my greatest childhood memories were made at family reunion, countless games of Mau and canoe trips to the "waterfall". Throwing people off the raft in the lake (King of the Raft was the best game ever) and then pouting when the raft got taken away. We built sand villages (castles don't even come close to what we built), played flash light tag, and after the mess hall renovation, extreme ping pong. Extreme ping pong was my favorite. It was me, my 4 cousins and running around a small rec room trying to keep the ping pong ball going.

We've also had talent shows galore, a disco night (another favorite of mine), hoe downs and an all-male wedding. I don't remember the all-male wedding but I've heard stories and it just sounds epic. We've had Mexican fiestas, carnivals, Halloween, and even the epic battle at the lake with water balloons and flour bombs!

I remember one year we did a carnival and my cousin Layke set up a kissing booth. He was probably 12 or 13 and it was adorable. I don't know if he made much money doing it but I will always remember him trying to sweet talk every female family member that walked by.

There was also the game where you could pay .10 cents and send whoever you wanted to jail for 5 minutes. It was very popular.

When I was really young, I remember a contest with rubber ducks. I was like 4 and I still have my rubber duckies. They are prized possessions of mine and I will never part with them!

It's funny to me that even at 23, I experience a child-like excitement when I go to Bear Lake Camp. In my mind, I step back in time and become a kid again. I play games and swing to see how I can go.The summer days seem endless and the nights bring camp fires and s'mores.

Our parents regale us with stories of rivalry between the McBrides/Jones. When I was a kid, the McBrides got together and made shirts that said Mac's Pack as a sign of humorous solidarity. The rivalry doesn't exist anymore but it's funny to imagine our parents going head to head to see which part of the family was better.

For the longest time, our parents wouldn't tell us what happened during their family reunions. They kept talking about being mischievous and getting into trouble. As it was the 70s, my cousins and I always assumed they ran off and smoked pot or something. Turns out, they would just run off with canoes, climb bluffs, and then jump off the top. To be honest, it was kind of disappointing. I kind of wanted our well-behaved, mature parents to be hooligans. So maybe wanting the parents to be hooligans who smoked illegal drugs is extreme but as far as I can tell, they were just normal, crazy teenagers. And that's kind of boring.

I mean it's not like we could do the same thing, there weren't any bluffs to climb at the new campground. And the smoking thing never appealed to us anyway. So I'm super excited for this weekend. As it is the 50th, there will be lots of people who haven't been in  years. People will ask me how I'm related and then realize that I've grown up some.


But the best thing about family reunion is that just for one weekend, we leave everything behind. We forget the differences, the distances, and the drama. At the end of the day we're family and 5 generations of McBrides/Jones have ingrained that in our souls. There isn't any stronger bond than family and I believe that's really what our great grandparents wanted us to remember.

And anyone who steps foot on Bear Lake Camp this weekend is family. Automatically. We'll pull you up a chair, offer you some molasses cookies or pie (which I HAVE GOT to get the recipe for) no questions asked.

I love my family beyond anything in the world and I'm so excited to see them all again. So here's to another 50 years of memory-filled McBride/Jones reunions!