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Keeping in Touch

Just because the reunion is over, doesn’t mean the good times have to stop. There are lots of ways you can still keep in touch and share! Treasure your First Annual Family Reunion by gathering photos and preserving all those terrific memories for the next family get-together. Find the best photo of the whole family. Scan it onto thank-you cards, or have copies of the photo made to send to everyone. Photos can also be sent to those who didn’t come—maybe next year, they’ll be the first to arrive for the fun!

START A FAMILY NEWSLETTER

In the meantime, a newsletter is a great way for a family to keep in touch and share news. You can take your list of all the people you invited to the reunion, including the ones who weren’t able to come, and turn it into a newsletter mailing list or send it out via email. When would you send out your newsletter? Maybe once a year at holiday time? Midway between family reunions? Maybe even twice a year, six months apart? What will you call the newsletter? How about The Family Bugle?

The most important details are: What is the newsletter going to say? How will you get the “news” for the newsletter?

Before you even begin to put together that first issue, email a brief note to everyone telling them that you are starting a family newsletter. Ask that whenever they have news to report or have family photos, to contact you! Tell them that you’d like to know things such as:

 

 Did anything special happen recently?

 How has the year been for you?

 What were the good things that happened?

 Did any bad things happen that you want to talk about?

 If you go to work, did anything interesting happen on the job?

 If you are in school, what are you studying?

 What films did you see this year? Which ones did you especially like?

 What books did you read this year? What was your favorite and why?

 Did you watch any sports? Which teams do you root for?

Gather up all the responses, put them in a folder, and refer to them when you write the text of your newsletter. Try to include as many different relatives in each issue of the newsletter as you can—so that they can look forward to mentions of themselves as well as to catching up on the news about other family members.

Next, you have to decide what your newsletter will look like. Not all of your relatives, especially the much older ones, will have access to a computer. Will it be a handwritten sheet that you photocopy, or something created on your computer and that you print on special paper, or will it be a file you send by email? Do you want to include photographs? Do you want a “Good News” section? Do you want to share recipes? How about information on favorite travel spots? Maybe you want to add some original poems and stories, too. And don’t forget items about the last family reunion or reminders about the next one you might be planning!

LAUNCH A FAMILY WEBSITE

Whatever you can do with a newsletter, you can do on a website. With your family’s permission and help, the right computer software, and some technical know-how, you might be able to get a website up and running yourself. If not, books are available to tell you what to do and how to do it, and some websites can help you set one up—or set it up for you. A website can be as creative and unique as you like, with photographs in full color, and even short videos or animation. Since websites can be accessed all over the world, family members don’t have to live right next door anymore, or down the block, or even in the next township over. People can live anywhere around the world and still be close!

Lucky you, if a sign tells where a photo was taken.

And you thought great grandpa only used a cane as he got older!