Family Reunion - A True Story

Well, Sunday was Rachel's family's family reunion. Here's a little summary. I swear that I am not making up or even embellishing anything that you're about to read.

The reunion was hosted by my wife's aunt LeAnn, a short, spunky woman who has recently had surgery to remove a large tumor in her brain. She was a little loopy to begin with, and from all that happened at the reunion, I don't think the tumor contained any of her loopiness. It's all still there. The moment I walked in the door, she pulled out her brain x-rays from an envelope to pass around for everyone to look at and admire. We ate a ridiculously big meal, after which LeAnn said that we should all go out into the back yard for a "surprise". The crazed look in her eye made me think that the "surprise" very well might involve drinking Kool-Aid and waiting for the comet to arrive.

We all shuffled out to the back yard, a little confused and curious. LeAnn announced that the theme of this reunion was "Christmas In July", and therefore no Christmas would be complete without a visit from Santa. So entered my brother-in-law, dressed in a homemade "summer Santa" outfit, complete with hat, red shirt and shorts trimmed with white fur, a white chin goatee, and a pair of Vegas Elvis-style sunglasses. And a pair of sandals with jingle bells attached. He's carrying three enormous cardboard boxes of wrapped gifts. Like, 40 of them. All wrapped in Christmas paper. First, the small children are given their gifts, which consist of some Matchbox cars and other inexpensive new toys. Not bad, I think. The kids all loved their presents. But, they would be the only ones enjoying this event. We all were given 2 gifts to open. At this point, it was time for LeAnn to let us in on her little secret. Here's the deal: LeAnn decided she wanted to clean all the old junk out of her basement, so she wrapped up everything a gave it to her family as presents!!! Here are some of the "gifts" that we received:

A box of miniature Snickers bars (which LeAnn said were 4 years old)
An embroidered sweatshirt, with the embroidery only half done
A hideously ugly metal votive candle holder, complete with reindeer pattern (my wife got this one)
A used dart board
A car trunk cargo net
Various pairs of women's socks and tights (used or new? who knows?)
A used "Orange County Choppers" baseball cap.
A broken fishing reel (there were a total of 12 of these)

After opening our gifts, we had the opportunity to trade with a family member to get a better gift. I tried to trade my stuff to Ethan for one of his Matchbox cars - he said it was a lousy trade.

So, that was my Sunday afternoon. Pretty standard, really. ;-)