We are Scottish, Irish, English, and some sort of ancestry with high cheekbones in their DNA from somewhere.  Our sense of humor and love for pranks and making up musical ditties attest to at least part of the origin of the clan.  The DNA test that Ancestry.com offers may solve the mystery to the rest.  I’ve been contemplating swabbing my mouth and sending my DNA off to be analyzed just to see where my ancestors trod once upon a time.  Just for the heck of it, the fun of solving the origin mystery and maybe creating a couple more mysteries.

All of us, the siblings and the young’ns, (most of them anyway) got together for a New Year’s Day Reunion/late Christmas Get-Together.  It was great!!

Santa had left a bunch of presents!!  So Ava helped put them under the BIG tree.  It was a madhouse for just a bit as the girls passed out gifts to everyone.

The talent show was exceptional this year with blues singers accompanied by the guitar as well as acapella; original songs written by the participants; a hover board exhibition; Watch Me Whip/Nae Nae dance routines; a chorus of girls singing Jingle Bells; gymnastics and ballet.  I am expecting more to be on the program for next year.  We are a talented bunch in this clan.

It took a little coaxing to get some of the kiddos out there while  others had two or three things planned to do.  We had no agenda and no idea who would do what.  Most of it was spur of the moment and turned out awesome!

Maci gets down to Watch me Whip.  Her brother, Owen, was awesome as well, but somehow I don’t have his picture.  Charlotte, the ballerina in the clan, was also  whipping and nae-naeing.  Yeah.  That doesn’t look like a word to me either.  Even little Henry, the pre-K kid, was stanky-legging!

Then there is always the game of “Write Down One Thing Nobody Knows About You.”  Little Ava won this year with her “I have been a mile underground.”  We have a few coal miners, so of course everyone guessed all of them first.  Nos abounded.  They were clueless, and would never have guessed if not for the big grin on Ava’s face and her sister seeing it.  Sisters just know when the other one is up to something.  We had gone to Ruby Falls in Tennessee last summer which had taken  us deep into the earth. Darla used the same one she used last year (she has to have some excitement in her life this year!).  And we should have all gotten “I am a word Nazi” right off the bat (Keely) but had to guess a while for some reason.  We all know how she loves to read!  Mike returned the joke “fact” Davy put in the pot about Mike last year with a “fact” of his own about Davy this year.  We were all staring at Davy in disbelief for just a brief minute!

Turning the garage into a party zone wasn’t too hard with the help of the cheap 25-cent red plastic tablecloths for the “stage” and some white disposable tablecloths for covering up all the garage junk.  Wah-la!!  Pristine white temporary walls!

There was enough food for the 30 people and enough desserts to fill our tummies.  We started the year off right with black-eyed peas and cornbread and cabbage on the menu as well. (Thanks to Donny, the cook, for the latter two.)

It was good to catch up, to see how the kiddos had grown, to reminisce, to laugh at each other and with each other, to tell tales of old and some of new on one another, to meet some of the new people in the clan this year and yell a little louder at some of the older people in the clan.

We are a clan of game players, a clan of laughers.  So after the last game that involved some  fast and furious thinking up sounds, one-word clues, and actions, we were beginning to settle down.  That’s when the grown-ups ventured over to the photo booth.  The kids found it early on and had already created images and movies galore!  I would so love to put the video of Nia on here with Owen:  he pretending to pick his nose and she, well, it was just interesting.

And kind of gross.