Every family over the years develops its own routine and rituals. There are certain things that your tribe does or doesn’t do. Our family is no different.
We have traditions of how we celebrate the holidays, birthdays and other big events. Like, we can’t truly celebrate a graduation without the appearance of chicken salad sandwiches. And nobody can really get married without my mom making the cake. Stuff like that.
But possibly the most “amusing” tradition my family had for many years, and mercifully has retired, is the “Fam-Do PIcnic Whether You Want to or Not.”
Yes, it is a long name but it pretty much tells the story.
Every fall just before we were about to go back to school our parents (aka Mom) would decide that the magical time had arrived. Family Picnic.
Now it wasn’t the kind of picnic you might imagine with homemade food, which is kind of ironic given my earlier examples. No, for this particular event we would load in the car and on our way to a nearby metro park, we’d stop at the now-defunct Big Bear grocery store and buy all our food. Potato salad, check; chicken, check; random doughnut or sweet of some sort, check; and so it went.
Then we’d drag our ghetto mother lode to the metro park and eat until we felt sick. I guess the reason we went to the park is so we could walk or waddle off all those calories. That or the location somehow made it a picnic.
Summer vacation was almost over, it was hot, we were all dreading going back to school and after many weeks at home we were definitely tired of each other. So when Mom would tell us it was time for the family picnic we’d all groan, complain and threaten to not go.
Which is how, over the years, it came to be known as “Family Picnic Whether You Want to or Not. Later, as is with my family, it got shortened, sorta, to “Fam-Do PIcnic Whether You Want to or Not.”
That was her way of telling us that we were going. Period. And we were going to have fun dammit. Period. Even if we didn’t like it. OK.
Yep, that’s how we roll in our family. Blissfully, after both my sisters moved away and we got older, the fam-do picnic was a thing of the past. A distant, but not fond, memory.
Several years ago when my sister moved back to Ohio there was a short-lived attempt to resurrect said picnic. Unlike a phoenix, the movement did not rise from the Dixie cup and paper plate ashes.
Sunshine & Sarcasm,
Lowi & G
Lowi & G 
I really miss your family. We had a lot of really great times growing up,. I am always showing new people who I am going to play golf with or whenever we were headed through West Jeff to go to Trey’s football games or Griffin’s hockey games………the brick twin single, where we grew up next
to each other early on with Kim next door. I tell them about coming out of house every so often and your dad would have a big deer hanging from the tree out front. (which is gone now). Or about telling them about the parties that were held there. I know we were very young, but I was just old enough to remember how epic they were. I miss your seeing your mom at the and just occasionally stopping in and talking to her at the cake shop. and I remember when my dad helped your dad build your house off of Taylor Blair when your mom started taking cake baking classes. I traded your mom, a wedding cake for Erica and I’s wedding cake for a hand painted sign that I custom made for here. I could go on and on about the things I miss doing with your family when we were kids. I love your blog, How did you get started blogging and how did the 100 days of happiness come to be and what is the meaning besides face value. I would really love to know more about it because of how much I love the concept. Do things like the hubby sweeping the floor make the list if your having a really bad day, does that count as (chalk one up for day 35 etc.) I am not one for great grammmmer, I am better at drawring pictures and painting. So please excuse how horribly this was written. Looking forward to hearing from you and G.
Missing the good ol’ days
Cris Thatcher
311Cris@gmail.com
LikeLike
Cris,
You have no idea how much your comment means to G and me. It came at the absolute perfect time. I think often about Pearl street and that little duplex. Whenever I am in town, which isn’t often, I drive by there. It just makes me smile thinking about all of us together. Lots of good memories, except the deer. I am not sure that is a good memory. I will say that image is burned into my memory forever! Thanks for the compliment on the blog. G and I love doing it. We had been talking about the concept for sometime and finally at the end of last year we just decided to go for it. It continues to evolve as we see what resonates with people and what is happening in our lives. We basically just take stories from everyday, what we are doing or some ridiculousness like the family picnic that we all hated, and talk about it.
We are also both coaches. Angie is a health and wellness coach, teaches yoga, classes and does personal training. I am more of a life coach and help people with all areas they are struggling with and help them to move forward in a positive direction. This little aspect is what drives the sunshine part of our blog. We try to lace stories, 100 days of happiness, gratitude into our days as well try to steer people away from the negative. There is WAY TOO MUCH NEGATIVITY and judgement in the world and our hope is that our blog brings people a little laughter, positivity, motivation and/or provocation to do something different tomorrow. The 100 days of happiness is pretty straight forward. It’s like around Thanksgiving everyone talks about being grateful. Well, what about the other 11 months out of the year? Why can’t we be grateful everyday? There is always going to be suffering and we can’t stop the bad things that come our way, but we can change our perspective. Sure, some days Andy vacuuming is the all I got, but the reality is that there is something every single day, if we look for it, that is positive. That particular day had a lot of other moments of happiness, but Andy vacuuming made me laugh and the fact that he didn’t want me take a photo makes it more fun. It’s boring to everyone else, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the feelings that it conjures up for ME! Fostering a life that has you looking for gratitude and happiness in everything you do changes you. Give it a try for 100 days and tag us in it. By the way, if you haven’t already you should subscribe to our blog on WP because people tell us all of the time that they don’t see it on FB. This way it will come straight to your email! Thank you again, Cris for reaching out and just telling us how you feel. It truly touched my heart.
LikeLike
Wow, after that all I can say is AWESOME SAUCE! We are so happy that you read our blog… even if it’s just today! Lots of good memories and good times. I will agree with Lori about minus the deer, though. Ugh. You just can’t unsee that. We are having a lot of fun with the blog even if we are only entertaining ourselves. Thanks for reading and all your kind words. G
LikeLike