Becoming His 31: Doyle Family Reunion {2018}

For years our extended family has gathered every 3 years in Ohio for a family reunion. When we were younger it was a blast! We looked forward to seeing cousins, aunts, great aunts/uncles and second cousins! (or is it first cousins once removed? I don't know.. that always confuses me, but you know - our parents cousins and their children!) My grandma is one of 13 children so this reunion included all of her siblings, their children, grandchildren and recently great grandchildren! There were 4 generations of family members gathering at one reunion, which sounds awesome... Except we had sort of gotten to the point where there were people there that we didn't really know any more. My grandma also moved to Virginia recently so connections in Ohio were lessening for most of my closer family members who were no longer making the trip north for the Reunion.

For the last 4 or 5 years my mom, her sisters and their kids {me and my cousins!} started talking about branching off and starting a smaller, Doyle reunion. This meant just my grandma's direct descendants. It took us a few years to get it going but we finally did it! I reached out to all of my cousins and aunts and uncles with a survey 2 years ago to get an idea of when and where most people would be able to come and then last year my aunt found the perfect place in Williamsburg, VA for us to hold it and we booked it! I had the honor of spear heading the event and I was so excited about the response from family members. We had 58 people come and only had a handful of people missing.

6 of my grandma's 7 daughters came!

21 of my grandma's 29 grandchildren made it!

18 of my grandma's 30 great grandchildren were also there. (32 if you count the 2 more on the way.)

I cannot get enough of this picture. My favorite from the entire weekend.

A lot of these greats met each other for the first time during this reunion and it was fun to watch them easily become little friends.

Of course we had matching Reunion Shirts and family pictures Saturday morning. : )

We had a fantastic time catching up with family!

I saw cousins that I hadn't seen in 4 or 5 years and met their children for the first time. Social media has its downsides but I was grateful that when we saw each other again after such a long time we didn't feel like strangers thanks to keeping up with each other on facebook. These cousins of mine were my best friends growing up and I can't adequately describe the joy I felt seeing them again after so much time... it was exactly the same but totally different at the same time! We are parents now! Running companies now! The babies of the fam are graduating and getting married now!

It's humbling to step back and observe the way the cycle of our family is continuing on from the sweet precious moments of the first family reunion when we were young children to now.

God has been good to our family!

He has been faithful to the Doyle's throughout the generations as we continue to serve and follow Him along the narrow way.