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2021 Family Reunion Update

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Dearest Family,

My mom said that I have to send out something about the family reunion. I have decided to post this in the form of a FAQ, Not for any particular reason. In fact, I didn’t know I had decided that until I typed that last sentence.

Q: When did you know you were going to send this out in the form of a FAQ?
A: 38 seconds ago.

Q: Are we having a family reunion this year?
A: Yes.

Q: When will the family reunion be?
A: Friday, July 2nd to Sunday, July 4th.

Q: What about the Thursday the 1st or Monday, the 5th?
A: Um, I don’t know. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Q: When will you get back to us?
A: We plan on having all of the normal family reunion info on the website by May 1st.

Q: Is that later than normal?
A: Yes. Last reunion it was up by April 29th.

Q: Why will it be 2 days later this year?
A: Shut up, Jimmy.

Q: When will we be able to make reservations?
A: May 18th.

Q: Why May 18th? And it that later than last year?
A: That’s when tax season is over, and we didn’t have a reunion last year.

Q: Can I ask Christina questions or make reservation before May 18th?
A: Yes, for $200 per question, which is her standard rate during tax season.

Q: Will our aunts & uncles, grandparents etc. get Covid?
A: No, they will all have been vaccinated by then.

Q: Will I have to wear a mask?
A: It depends on what Heit’s Point says, but we will be mostly outside.

Q: Will I get to wear a mask?
A: It depends on whether you are the Lone Ranger.

Q: Was that a terrible joke?
A: Yes.

Q: Anything else Covid related?
A1: We’ll have hand sanitizer around.
A2: We’ll love our family members who are more/less concerned than we are about Covid.

Q: Did you fail to anticipate any of our questions?
A: Yes.

Q: Why is that?
A: You guys ask some weird questions.

Q: Do you still love us?
A: Yeah, I guess I do.

Q: What if I have other questions?
A: You could comment below.

Q: Will I be charged $200?
A: Only if Christina answers your question.

Q: Goodbye?
A: Goodbye.

Lloyd Jr.

2020 Reunion Survey Results

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Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey. There were 42 of you who filled out the survey representing 120 people in our family. 

This is how you decided: “Should we have the reunion?”

  • If we count one survey one vote: Yes: 15 No: 27
  • If we count each person in your households: Yes: 48 No: 72

I think that is a clear majority, but I indicated that if it was close we would weigh the votes by the number of times people attended the reunion in the past 5 years. After all, you could argue that it should be the people who go who decide. 

  • Weighted by attendance: Yes: 53 No: 60

You also answered the question, “Should we have the reunion if only this many people can attend?” The maximum number of people who indicated that they would attend was 39 (but some of them qualified their attendance). Most people thought that was not enough people to have the reunion. Even allowing for likely attendees who didn’t respond to the survey, this would still have been, at best, a tie.

Personally, I believe you have made a good decision. Not necessarily because of the danger, but because I think you’ve made a more unifying decision. Frankly, we have a hard time agreeing on just how ugly Sam is. As much as I will miss seeing you this summer, I would not have enjoyed the inevitable disagreements on what safety measures we should take. 

Three of you indicated that you would be upset if we didn’t have the reunion (though one of you voted not to have it). I am very sorry. 

There were also questions about what we should do if we don’t have the reunion over the 4th at Heit’s Point. This is what you said about that:

  • 12: Look at rescheduling the reunion for the Fall if Heit’s Point has dates available.
  • 7: Look at rescheduling the reunion for the Fall somewhere else if Heit’s Point doesn’t have dates available..
  • 7: Look at having a “virtual reunion” using Zoom over the weekend of the 4th.
  • 33: Just cancel. It’s okay to skip a year.

So it looks like people think that canceling is a reasonable thing to do. It is certainly the easiest thing to do, but if someone wants to organize something later in the year, I think that would be fine as well.

A number of you had suggestions that centered around having a less elaborate family reunion where we might all bring our own food for a picnic together on a Sunday, hear a (someone said short) sermon by Steve and play a ballgame before heading back home. Someone else suggested a float trip. If you organize one of those, please keep our family’s safety in mind.

The vast majority of you said that we should still donate to Heit’s Point even if we don’t have the reunion this year. They are not in danger of closing, but we do want to do our part. I can’t imagine where else we could go and enjoy ourselves as much. Send me your ideas about how we should go about that, and I’ll send something out to the whole family once I hear from you.

A couple of you expressed concerns that if we do not have the reunion this year, many people will not come in the future. I did not get that impression from the answers people gave on the survey. From what you all said, I think you are very much looking forward to seeing everyone next year and will be making it a priority to attend.

Speaking of next year, when the 4th is on the weekend, we always go with that weekend. So I would like to propose we go with July 2nd (Friday) to July 4th (Sunday) next year. And I guess we can add no pandemic to our prayers for no heat and no rain.

There were many other questions on the survey, but they dealt with what things might look like if we were having the reunion, so I didn’t do the same amount of tallying of results. Lots of you had good ideas on things we could have done to make the reunion safer. But, of the 31 to 39 family members who indicated they would attend a reunion this year, there was no consensus at all on what we would be willing to do to keep each other safe. In fact, the only thing we came close to agreeing on was that we should wash our hands before we eat. I guess we can thank our moms for that. 

As always, please post your comments below.

2020 Reunion Survey

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Note: You probably saw this already in an email or on Facebook. I thought I should also include it here for completeness.

First things first: We would like every family to fill out the survey, even if you already know that you can’t go to the reunion this year. It helps us know that we have reached everyone in the family.

A month ago we chose to put off until June 1st the decisions about the family reunion. Christina, Paul, Sam, Rachel, Lauren and myself have spent a combined 14 hours talking about what you have shared with us and what questions we need to ask to reach a decision. 
The survey will allow us to answer these questions:

  1. Do we hold a family reunion on the weekend of the 4th of July this year? (we will go with the majority)
  2. If we hold the reunion, what do we need to do differently this year? (we will go with the majority of people who are going)
  3. If we don’t hold a reunion at Heit’s Point over the 4th, what would we like to do instead? (we would finalize this later)

The survey is relatively long (23 questions) because we are making 3 decision and we want to make sure we understand everyone’s views. The survey will be available until 6pm on June 2nd (a little over 2 days). I will not share your individual answers with anyone. We anticipate having the results on June 5th, but may have them sooner if everyone is more or less in agreement about what we should do. 

When we “count the votes”, we will be using one vote per person instead of one vote per household. Only one person in your household needs to fill out the survey, and you can include anyone in your family who doesn’t use the internet if you want. But don’t fill it out for other people who might fill out the survey for themself. One of the first questions is, “Who are you are filling out the survey for?”

If different people in your household would have different answers to questions, they can fill out a survey instead of being included in your survey, or you can submit a second survey just for them. For example my wife, Lauren, knows that she can’t make it this year, so I’m going to fill out the survey once for me and once for her. But I wouldn’t do that if our answers were the same.

Note: I indicated in last months email that we would look at the possibility of delaying the decision until June 15th. It does not look like the timing works out to wait that long. We could have waited another week to decide, but it didn’t seem like anyone would know much more in one week, so we decided to proceed with the original plan.

While you are taking the survey, feel free to ask me any questions if something is unclear: Lloyd@LloydAndLauren.com. But most of the questions have little explanations to help you decide what they are asking. Please read those before you contact me, or I will make fun of you.

Here’s the link for the survey:

https://forms.gle/xg5FfkM9PpgxLWV17