In Acknowledgement of the fact that I have "groupies" who sometimes read what I write, and for everyone else's amusement, I provide this as a behind the scenes look at everything that goes into the Harris family's annual trek to the Taylor Family Reunion (TFR). This rendition would be the ugly cousin of the superb prose provided by Miss Jan, to whom we are all indebted for helping us preserve our memories of the 2011 TFR. I hope that what I write does not permanently scar that memory.
Cabins, cabins, who's got the cabins?
First, let me say that our planning for this trip began last year with the reservations being made at the park offices upon our 2010 departure, whereby a king's ransom was plopped down to reserve all of the cabins that the park has to rent (in case our relatives from foreign nations such as Great Britain and/or Texas decide to show up). At some point, after all of the travel plans have been firmed up, each family is assigned it's lodging, and the residual cabins are turned back in for some lucky person on the waiting list to snatch up.
Tee shirts
The tee shirt design, order, production, procurement and delivery process is wholly credited to one Mr. Jerry Clark Taylor, my fantastic Father-in-law. He is the inspiration and the impetus behind the whole effort. Ever since Memorial Day of 2001, a gathering that I foolishly chose to miss (traveled to a college baseball regional tournament in New Orleans) tee shirts have been a mainstay of Taylor family gatherings. The designs are executed by me with idea help from the rest of the family, but the inspiration belongs to our family's patriarch. The call for orders is sent by email, face book, phone call, letter, post card and pony express; and the replies are collected and tabulated by Jerry and flawlessly passed along to the tee shirt guy. OK, we do sometimes have to add on to or change our order, but eventually everyone gets a tee shirt that is close to the size they ordered. (Note: if anyone needs any of the tee shirts reprinted or done in an additional size, just let us know and we can make it happen)
Lessons learned
Every year, as we come upon some of the great things that helped make the reunion so much more enjoyable, we write them down so that when we start planning for the next year we can make sure to include them. I might also add that we also write down some of the not-to-do things like: don't put the bag of s’ mores supplies next to the dog in the back of the car, (which led to: make more frequent stops to check the dog, and bring more wet wipes for accidents in the car). But some of the good things were: need the gallon size bottle(s) of vodka; bring extra shelving (170 sqft) to store food in cabin -- see menu planning below; if you put individual toiletries on the packing list (and those items go into a toiletry bag), also put the toiletry bag on the list; don't speed in the park as the siren disturbs the wildlife; vodka has excellent medicinal properties and can be used for significant edge smoothing and for body preparation for naps; make sure children's smelly shoes are stored outside of cabin; make sure you have a means of securing children's shoes stored outside of cabin from being mistaken for food and taken by nocturnal wildlife; bring extra money to replace mysteriously lost shoes (you see how all of this starts to fit together); bring gallon sized bottles of vodka (I know, you think I'm repeating myself, but this is MORE gallon sized bottles of vodka); include cocktail hour in afternoon schedule (prior to afternoon nap); drink extra water to stave off negative effects of edge smoothing cocktail hour-- I could go on and on with the list, but you get the drift.
Meal planningOther preplanning includes that which we do for the meals we have while at the reunion. If you have seen some of the pictures of our family you might have guessed that meal planning is something into which we put a great deal of effort. For the mid October gathering, our planning begins in February, usually with someone saying "OK WHAT ARE WE MAKING AT GREENLEAF THIS YEAR!!!?", and then the list making begins. We start with somewhere around 474 different favorite family recipes (for the 10 or so meals we will need to prepare) and whittle it down to just under a hundred. As we get closer to the reunion, and have to start thinking about buying the stuff to make the meals, we find a way to eliminate some of the less favorite items. This year we used voting, which was preceded by 190 minutes of debate (using standard British parliamentary rules), lobbying by outside interests, bribery, deception, and finally, last minute changes because the family members that insisted on the liver and brussel sprout casserole had decided not to come. For the Harris's the grocery shopping that supports this meal planning exercise is quite substantial and will be depicted for you in a major subparagraph below.
List making and packing
If any of you have read my earlier posts about my fly lady following, list-making wife, you'll understand that the list making aspect of our trip is one of greatly intricate detail... For a reason-- you do not under any circumstances want to leave anything behind in your house... and therefore you need to make sure everything that you own is on the packing list. (Note: this is such an endeavor that my US government employer actually gives me a special day off for preparation -- most people think that the 2nd Monday in October is Columbus Day, but it is actually Greenleaf packing day). Our list is actually a soft bound book (like a journal) of lists that can be kept for comparison to next year's list and that has also been rigorously checked against the previous years' lists. The lists have distinct purposes and are meticulously checked off, highlighted and color coded to indicate the packing status of each items. This is logistics! "Checked" means gathered into the kitchen area, "green highlight" means packed in freight container, "lined through" means assembled into the garage, "blue highlight" means needs to be purchased at Harp's, "X’d out" means loaded into car, coffee stain means you worked on the list late at night, etc. Everything that is going, goes on the list, and everything is then checked as it goes through its "phases". As I said, it's logistics and my wife is the queen of lists and logistics, so do not mess with her lists! ... I'm completely serious here! Don't you do it!
Once everything is loaded into the 5 vehicles that it takes to move all of our necessary items to the park, we can depart. Anything that does not fit into the 5 vehicles can either be shipped by overland freight, or removed from the list and purchased in either Muskogee or Gore.
Arrival at the parkUpon arrival, all the sh*t (note: during packing and transporting operations the necessary items have transformed into sh*t) that we packed is dumped out and placed into our 400 square foot cabin. This somewhat resembles the Siegfried and Roy illusion where they make a battleship disappear. You can imagine that this tends to make our cabin very "cozy", and when you add 13 kids and 5 dogs playing cards, games, and watching TV (note: the dogs do not play cards- that painting is not real) you can understand the need for the edge smoothing cocktail hours.
Groceries
As promised, this subparagraph is a depiction of the local shopping that is required to provide the meals and other activities that are prevalent at the TFR. To back up a bit, understand that every cubic inch of the five vehicles we use to transport our necessary items to the lake are full, so our food and other necessary items (things we forgot - if you can believe that) must be purchased locally. Once our mid-sized SUV is stripped of the spare tire, tools, carpet, headlining, and the 2nd and 3rd row of rear seating we are ready to do our grocery shopping. Prior to entering the store, we decide on a story of how we are purchasing food for a 600 soldier battalion of military reservists stationed at Camp Gruber (adjacent to the park) so as not to get responses such as "holy crap that's a sh*t load of food for a family reunion". We also electronically transfer the money from our 401 K accounts into checking to cover the impending expense (thank goodness for our bank i-phone app). We traverse the rows strategically filling our 4 grocery carts with items from every section of the store, but most prominently from the high fat and sugar areas, being careful to only select the snack items made entirely of trans-fats. Once we have completed the gathering process and head to the front of the store, the store manager sounds an alert siren and an army of people are brought in from the back of the store to process our purchase. After we leave, the store shuts down to restock and its owner goes to Muskogee to buy a new Volvo. Before returning to camp, we stop by the Gore liquor store for more gallon sized bottles of vodka.
Well that pretty much gets you up to the point that Jan wrote about. I hope this gives you some insight into how much we love this reunion. That should be obvious as no one in their right mind... OK, not even people not in their right mind would go through all of this if our time there was not absolutely like heaven on earth.
P.S. Stay tuned as I will soon be posting part 2 of this 3 part story. Part 2 will provide a point of view of the meat of the reunion different from the Norman Rockwellesque version provided by my lovely Aunt Jan.
