MacGregors, Schroeders and a Cruze

So much has happened since the last time I've sat down to write to you. I'm going to start with the MacGregor family reunion which was held in Winneconne, Wisconsin on Saturday, July 21st.

My grandparents on my mother's side - Gordon and Edna Murphy MacGregor had nine children: Mary Grace, Donald, Irene (my mother), Jack, Bruce, Harry, Teddy, Charlie and Molly. Over the years we have met many times for family reunions. We began by gathering in Hemet, CA, then moved to SanDiego, CA and this year for the first time it was hosted by the Schroeder branch in Wisconsin.

Instead of having a reunion "day" it was more like a reunion "week" because our cousins who traveled from Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan wanted to take in as much of the wonderful state of Wisconsin that they could.
They began to arrive as early as the Sunday before the reunion. My nephew Nico surprised his grandma and grandpa Van Dyke when he walked into their home last week Sunday. Tuesday cousins Mary Christine and Patty arrived with their friend Donna, Wednesday brought Brian MacGregor and Cathy Cruze, Thursday was a busy day of arrivals with my nephews Charles and Garritt, my son and daughter-in-law Jon and Marina as well as Amy MacGregor and Uncle Jack MacGregor, and then Friday Scott, Jim and Gina MacGregor arrived as well as my cousin Mary Grace with her entire family. They flew into Chicago, Milwaukee and Appleton. On Thursday we had to travel to Milwaukee airport twice because Jon and Marina fly standbye (Jon works for the airlines) and they had to take two different flights because there wasn't enough empty seats on the early flight. Marina arrived at 3:30 pm and Jon didn't get in until after midnight the next morning.

As you can see we had plenty of activities planned for our family. The most important thing, so we made sure it was on the agenda every day, was the catching up (gossip) on the cousins who decided not to attend.
We started partying on Tuesday night with German food at a local Oshkosh restaurant, The Roxy. I haven't laughed that much in a long, long time. More on Tuesday night in the next blog.