Fitzgerald Family Reunion

Saturday, July 9th marked the first annual Fitzgerald reunion which was the idea of M's mom Karen but coordinated large in part by M.  Fitzgerald was Karen's maiden name and she is the oldest living Fitzgerald,  as she lost her brother, mom, dad and sister within a period of 10 years.  The reunion was held at M's parents house in Hinckley.  Everyone was welcome to stay the weekend and a good amount came up on Friday and stayed until Sunday as well as people just coming up for Saturday.  There was a memory board of the people that have passed away as well as a huge family tree that M's sister Lisa created that had about 110 people on it, which is just going back to M's grandparents or Karen's parents.  That's a lot of people for not that many generations.  In addition, there was another small "family tree" that showed M's great grandparents and great-great grandparents but no branches from it as the information known about families that far back is incomplete.  M has six first cousins on this side but the numbers really start to increase when you start counting his second and third cousins.  Because M is the youngest in his immediate family for siblings, which ranges from  age 54 to 37, his cousins are in line in age to seem like his aunts and uncles and his second cousins are even a few years older to about seven years younger than him. (This was very confusing to me when I first started coming around his family.)

It was a potluck so there was lots of food there and we listened to music, played many different types of yard games, including an adult water balloon toss but Hammerschlagen was the big hit.  If you've never heard of or played Hammerschalgen, read about it.  I played a few games but never won.  Actually, there was only one female winner for the whole weekend.

There was lots of pictures taken.  Each individual family go together and posed for all the cameras and then a big group shot was attempted.  I took tons of pictures to capture the whole day/weekend which most of them went as part of a Facebook album for the Fitzgerald Family Reunion event page but here's a sampling of some of those pictures.

Overall, it was a huge success and everyone had fun.  I already knew many of these family members and I was able to talk and get to know a handful of them even better.  M has a great family that backs one another and truly loves each other.  They definitely know the meaning of family.

After we left M's parents house on Sunday morning, we stopped at the cemetery since it was the three year anniversary of my grandma's death.  We went to her grave site (and my grandpa's too) and then went to the opposite side of the same cemetery and visited my other Gramma.  This was only the second time I had been to this Gramma's site since she passed in February.  I had a good cry in both areas of the cemetery...sometimes you just need to do that.

Fitzgerald can coolers which were the brilliant idea of Johnny and Marcia

M's cousin Chuck with a picture of himself and Cherrie (M's sister who passed away) on his shirt

M and his siblings, nieces and nephew, parents and any spouses

M with his parents, siblings and first cousins

The water balloon toss which I turned out to be very bad at!

...And I guess so was M's cousin Pat