Frerx Adventures: Duesterhaus Family Reunion, 2008 Jun 28

Trevor gets a week off of summer work out schedule the week of July 4th and so he arrived home on Friday June 27th.

This allowed him to attend the Duesterhaus family reunion which was held at my brother's house this year. Bobby and Judy hosted approximately 80 people in their backyard on a gorgeous summer Saturday.

This reunion gathers the descendents of Henry and Elizabeth Jansen Duesterhaus, my grandparents. They had 10 children with only my uncle Paul still around. Although my maternal grandparents actually have more descendants, if all the my cousins, and their families showed up we would be in the hundreds so I have trouble recognizing my own relatives.

It's more difficult for me than most others since I am the youngest of my generation so many of my cousins were married and moved out of town before I was old enought to recall family gatherings.

Trevor was also glad that we all wore name tags since he happens to be the youngest child or the youngest grandchild.

To help break the ice and get people mingling, Michelle handed out a special style bingo card where you had to find someone among the guest who had done on of the things noted on the bingo card. For example, I was signing the squares for having "Sold girl scout cookies". Ken could sign having "Graduated from Quincy University", Trevor has "Played in a Gus Macker basketball tournament". Some were a bit harder to track down like "Took a pig to school" or "Threw up on a carnival ride" ! The game really did the trick though and got people talking and enjoying the day as a group.

My cousin, Richard, the oldest of my generation, led the family in a blessing before meal time. Bobby and Judy provided the main course, barbequed pork sandwiches....should have known the pork producer wouldn't be serving burgers!! Judy must have spent days preparing the mass quantities and the sandwiches were great. Of course, there was a great assortment of covered dishes that were set out on tables on the back porch.

Cousins Clareny Deters, and Ronnie Duesterhaus with my brother, Bobby...tough to keep the farm boys away from the corn field!

Several of my nephews lent picnic tables to the event that were set up in the machine shed. After lunch this was a perfect place to play bingo using the cards we'd been filling out earlier. Trevor was drafted to pull names out of a bucket to match against the names signed in the bingo squares.

One of the highlights of the day was an uninvited guest, the neighbors' tom turkey. Great-nephew, Ethan was able to get ol' Tom to strut his stuff in an impromptu version of the 'Turkey Trot'.