Family Talent Show and Maximum Bonding

 Someone (not me) had the idea to have a family talent show.  My big brother and his son Alex played a really cool duet on the piano.

I of course fretted for days and at the last minute had us do a quick version of "When Santa Comes to Mexico"  which is one of my favorite silly Christmas songs.  It was cute because we pointed to Tayevion as being "Pablo" (you know, the reindeer that helps Santa out in Mexico).  Jonas had to work that night so he wasn't there.

Here's my other brother with is family singing a cute song, I can't remember the name though.

Even little Jasmine did a song on the piano.  It was sooo cute!  Since she has never taken lessons, she just played a little tune she came up with. It was like 3 keys played over and over from one end of the piano to the other.  She was so concentrated too.  The rest of us were listening to her, but trying not to laugh because Taye was dancing in front of the piano.  It was so funny.

Here's Sidney and Kailee, they did a song.  My other niece Carina also played but I didn't get a good picture.

Then we forced, literally forced, my parents to come up and share a story from their childhood.  I don't know why they were so reluctant, well mostly my dad was.  In the end, he shared a story about the first Christmas present he received.  He was 12 when he got it!  He told us about how special he felt.  It was like a little matchbox car, I think a jeep.  It was cool for the kids to put all that they have into perspective.  I wish we could have recorded the stories that they shared, especially because I am trying to remember what my mom told us and I can't!  Good thing I have this blog, or I would forget my own family history!

Okay, after my mom and dad were done, it was my turn to take the lead.  I had asked for some time to do a "mystery bonding activity".  Ever since I missed the opportunity to do this at our last family reunion three years ago, I have wanted to do this the next time we were all together.  I was kind of embarrassed but I got up the nerve to initiate it anyway.  I don't know why but I started crying even as I was explaining it to them.  It's an activity that I did in my first year of college with my FHE group.  And it made a profound impression on me, all these years.  It's easy, all you do it sit in a circle with one person taking turns sitting in the middle and everyone in the circle tells that person one thing they love about them.  Or a memory with them, or anything nice about them.  I knew that some people would not be too excited about doing this, that it might sound boring but I felt really strongly that it would be a good experience.

Boy was I surprised by some of the reactions as we got going.  Especially the kids.  I thought for sure some of the kids would be giving generic answers just to pass on to the next person.  But no, they really thought about what they wanted to say and several of them cried every time thinking about that person!  It is really an amazing thing, when you are looking at that person that you love and thinking of all of the things that you love about them, the spirit was sooo incredibly strong that night!  And pretty much everyone was crying.  It was so great to hear kids say to parents and vice-versa, things that they might not ordinarily say.

It was such a bonding experience.  The only problem was that it took a REALLY long time.  There are like 24 of us!  In fact, we only got through half of the circle.  But that is okay because somehow I think that the people who got to have a turn were the ones that really needed to hear what was said about them.  And it is an experience for the person sharing as well as the person hearing anyway.  I felt bad because we were supposed to go to temple square that night and we didn't get to because this took so long, but I was still so glad we did it.  Several people expressed to me how glad they were that we got to do this, so that made me happy.