Last weekend was our annual family reunion.  Each year we spend a weekend in August in the Northwoods sharing food, stories and time with extended relatives ranging from my 2-year-old twins to our 87-year-old grandmother.  It’s a great time for reminiscing, while creating new memories. 

 Even though we’ve had losses over the last few years with the passing of Papa Norm and Papa Chuck, the numbers seem to keep growing as more cousins get married and more grandchildren and great grandchildren are born.  

 The same old ping pong table is set up for the kids’ game during the day and beer pong for the adults at night.  Now it’s moved to the new garage where it doubles as the buffet table at dinner time.  Al and Alice keep adding to their flock of plastic pink flamingo lawn ornaments.  Andy still runs a 10-K race on Saturday morning before heading up to join the rest of us.  Jim sets the grate over the fire pit to cook corn-on-the-cob on Saturday night.  Tracy and Kelly work on games for the kids and prize bags for the lucky winners; which usually turns out to be all of the kids.  Adults and kids join in on the water balloon toss where the only dry team is the winning team.  John ends up pouring the leftover water from the water balloon cooler over someone’s head.  The weekend ends with the awards ceremony for Saturday’s Norm Leurquin Open – the family golf tournament. 

 It seems the perfect example of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”  We drive 90 minutes north to get away from the daily issues of life to re-enter our past for just a few days.  We work hard to recreate the same fun and memories we had 10, 15 years before.  It all works to a degree, but inevitably we must come home again and continue our current lives.  We love our current lives, but how refreshing it is to go back in time for that brief period. 

 How do you get away and create a break from your life?