Following a few days of business meetings for my husband, my extended family convened in Park City, Utah to escape the Texas heat and celebrate (a month early) my mom’s birthday.
My mom will turn 80 in August. For my dad’s 80th birthday back in 2017, the entire family (all their kids/spouses/grandkids and spouses) went skiing in Colorado. (His birthday is Christmas Eve.) So we thought it fitting to do something similar for Mom. Of course, now the grandkids are in stages of life where not all of them could come, partly due to the great-grandchildren now in the family! However, we’ve managed to pull together all of my siblings and their spouses and eight of the seventeen grandkids + spouses.
We’re enjoying the views and the cool evenings and mornings. The “over 48s” took a jeep trip up the mountain Monday afternoon. It was a bit rougher than we bargained for but we laughed a lot and made great memories.
We’ve had pool time at the condo complex as well as hiking time and shopping time. The plan was to have one big family event per day and beyond that, people were free to do and be on their own or in groups. I think that has worked well.
Today most of the group is white water rafting. However, Mom, Dad, and I are visiting the Park City Museum. Thursday we will all visit Olympic Park, where the young (or young at heart) will do the daring things (zip lines, tubing, alpine slide, etc) while the rest of us will take the guided history tour and explore the museum.
But the pinnacle of our trip was last night. We had our one big family meal at Riverhorse on Main Street in Park City. Jeff and I have been here several times with work conferences and have always loved it, so we thought it would make a good place to celebrate Mom’s eighty (almost) years on earth. Yummy food and great company. Doesn’t get any better than that! We capped off the evening with a birthday cake while we watched a slideshow of Mom’s life and played a game to celebrate her.
Come Sunday, we’ll be back to scorching heat, but the memories made this week will refresh us for years to come.
Have you been on a large family trip? How did it go? Would you do it again?
Patrick & I went on a ski trip twice with all the family to Keystone, CO. This was about 15 years ago. There were, at least, 30 of us and our youngest child was still in high school(Rachel). We really didn’t have any “greats” for Nanny & Pappy, yet, so it made it easier for all the grandkids to come. Grands were mostly young adults. We stayed in a huge house & had some meals catered in!! This was so great & we have fond memories of all being together.
Sounds like y’all had a great trip! It’s good to get at least one of those with multiple generations. We got one a few years ago before the great-grands started coming. 🙂