Burkholder Reunions

I grew up always having two Burkholder reunions every summer. One was always referred to as the "Little" Burkholder reunion, and the other was always the "BIG" Burkholder reunion. Those designations always made a lot of sense to me. The Little Burkholder reunion was never very many people since my Mom came from a family of 4 and we only had 10 cousins on that side--some of whom lived in Arizona and were seldom at the reunion anyway. In addition, they were smaller people. The BIG Burkholder reunion was lots of people since my Dad come from a family of 15 children and we had lots and lots of cousins on that side--most of them 10-30 years older than I am. Not only were there more people, but they were bigger people. My sister's dream was once to "be as fat as Aunt . . . . " (Should I add that it is no longer her dream?)

Yesterday was the Big Burkholder reunion. We have one remaining aunt, Aunt Nora, who is 94 and our aunt on both sides of the family.

Attendance is now more like 125 instead of the 400 as Aunt Nora reminded us yesterday. We had a candy drop from an airplane and neighbor boys brought their horses and were giving rides to the other children (not a planned activity).

There were many people at the reunion yesterday that I didn't even recognize as relatives (mostly cousins' grandchildren, I think). There were others there that I recognized as relatives (mostly cousins' children). There were others that I recognized as cousins and could generally place in the correct family, but being at the tail end of the cousins has kept me struggling to know my first cousins. My embarrassing moment yesterday was asking one of my cousins about her brother's daughter. I should have known, but I messed up again. She kindly got me straightened out.