MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL

At this most blessed time of the year, please take time to reflect on your past, your present and where you would like to be in the future. Take time for gratitude, for joy, for love, for prayer, and take time to include fun. Spend time with those you love, spend time doing something special for others, think of those who are less fortunate, and take time for relaxing.

May you all be blessed during this season and may you all be blessed during this coming year. Most of us have faced some really hard challenges this year. y challenge to you all this coming year is to take a look at ourselves and really determine to change something. It may be the way we see, the way we think, the way we act or react, it may be making a move, going back to school, getting in touch with someone we once knew.

My prayer for you all is that this next year will be a much calmer and peaceful year. May God's Blessing be on you and your household.


Love Jean

SNOW TIME.....
I see Alberta had a great amount of snow and now it is our turn. We are to get 20-40cm tomorrow. Of course it wouldn't be a great snow storm without freezing rain first uhg! Oh well winter has to come to Canada sometime better sooner than later. On my trip to Alberta I took my winter, fall and summer coats and only ended up using my winter one.

We had a great time visiting most of the relatives while there and even had a quasi family dinner of Chicken On The Way. I must be getting old or my taste buds are changing. I did not find it as good as I remember. As for the corn fritters, you needed a magnifying glass to find the corn. Good times were had by all anyway and as you can see from the pictures, we all had that grease laden hung over look.

 Eric with Austen and Gabie with Patrick - so cute to have three little ones all born within a couple of months. Going to be good times watching them grow up.

Jen, Jeff and Maren partaking of Chicken On The Way. Our calculations on servings were way off, so I am sure we fed 1/4 of Calgary the next day at lunch.

I would like to thank Marilyn Tryon, the Doug Tryons, Michelle, and Tabi for the fantastic short notice, johnny-on-the-spot breakfast baby shower they hosted for Nicole Kehler. We even managed to have baby shower games, breakfast food and prizes. This shower came together within a 24 hour period and I do believe it was the best one I have ever attended. We even had two men attend - Geoff and Eric. Good on you guys for showing up - even if it was the food that was the drawing card!

Jolly Jumper 

More gifts - note Marilyn Jr. holding Austen born in August.

The Baby Shower Recipients - Geoff, Nicole, Dakota, Zack and Patrick

Also a big thank you to Justin, Kristie, Jette, Kaia and Brynn for taking their cousins Geoff, Nicole, Gabie, Dakota, Zack and Patrick with them Halloweening. Though it was a mite on the chilly side, the kids managed to bag a fair amount of candy. The dentist should be laughing all the way to the bank in about three months or so.

Jeff Tryon's Halloween Masterpiece

Had some interesting conversations while out there and I think it is time we started putting together a bit of family history. So I will collect all the data, stories, tidbits, pictures etc. that any one would like to submit. Once there is a sizable amount I will ask for volunteers to help co-ordinate it all. So if you would either email or snail mail me pictures and stories, I will start collecting. Please do not worry about any pictures going missing, I am making a promise here to get them back to you within a two week time frame. I don't want pictures and stories just of past reunions, I would like to have a history of each family. Including dates, places etc. would be most helpful. If I get enough stuff I will put it on display at the reunion, July 13th 2013. At this point I believe that the reunion will be at Anderson Park in Three Hills - though that does seem odd as that is the other side of the family. I am open to suggestions, so bring them on.

This picture is of the hospital that Uncle Bink was born in at Mundare Alberta. The date on the hospital is 1929, so the hospital wasn't too old when he was born on May 2nd, 1930.

I don't have any new-old scanned pictures done, so I will leave you with this funny. I think I saved it off of Pintrest. I do not know who put it together, but koodoos to whoever came up with it.

Have a good weekend.

Jean

I hope all of you had a fun and enjoyable summer. I know I did - working (sad), babysitting (happy), attending the stampede parade with Betty Lou, Kristie and Kiai (big happy), doing some Manitoba things (some happy). Now we can all settle in for the long winters nap.

I have set a date for our reunion - JULY 13th, 2013, so put it on your calendars. I expect with this much time to plan YOU WILL ALL BE THERE!!!!!. I haven't decided on a place as of yet. Bowness Park is definitely out as I understand it will take the better part of two years to update the site. I really would like the older folk to attend ie Tookie, Joan and Walter, Marilyn and Jim, so am trying to come up with a place that won't put them in too much distress. It more than likely won't be in Calgary. If anyone has any ideas, please leave a comment. It would be nice if it could have some significance to the family.

In ways it is a good thing that we did not hold the reunion in the past couple of years as 2013 is the 100th anniversary of the Flemings coming to Canada. They arrived in Halifax in January of 1913 and eventually settled in the Coronation area. Not all the clan came only the younger kids. I believe the older 4 were already married and not about to up-root their families. So along with Granddad Fred, granny Hannah, dad (Vince) came aunts Lucy and Hilda along with uncle Reg. Uncle Charlie had arrived earlier. He was sent to scope out the country. Just imagine what fun that would have been! I would have loved to be a settler. Oh wait - we lived like that at Ozada - maybe not so much fun.

Back to the reunion. Me and my committee (of 1- Roscoe) have decided that all your needs will be met for that day. To facilitate with any expenses incurred ie. food, site, prizes etc., I will be charging a nominal fee for each family. Note to the Doug Tryon offspring - this means that anyone over the age of 18 will be considered their own family. Along with this privilege will come the opportunity to bring one guest. The other ones can bring a guest too - but I suggest you check with your spouses on this one - they may not like your choice baaahhaaaa! I plan to have a trailer there for the old folk and the young to go have their afternoon snoozes in. As well as to heat and cool items. This year we are having some additions to the family - Tabi and Eric now have little Austin, Justin, Kristi, Jette and Kiai are awaiting their new arrival any day now, Geoff, Nicole, Dakota and Zack are also awaiting their new son/brother around about October 1st. So, along with the few that have been born over the last few years, we will be overrun with little ones Yeah!  Gonna be good to meet all these new little ones.

My plans are to have some games/competitions for the kids and adults, some story telling, some crafts for the kids, some thinking games and of course food. I would like yo all to bring pictures. I would suggest scanning the ones that you have and bringing copies as sometimes pictures have a way of walking away. If you have artifacts from the past bring them for a display. Maybe the wildest one will win a prize.

To again get you thinking about our gathering here are some more pictures from past gatherings.

Enjoy!

Lori's birthday at the Zoo

Was so cold that day, I think the whole party took 1/2 hour.

The Big Rock Adventure

Mom always wanted to see the rock

Those who could make it to the top

Come on Ma - I'll help you down!

Bowness Fun

The love of Cheryl's life

The two Hootches as Grandma called them along with Terri's great smile

Hey Traudt - watch that hand!

Jean and Glenn's goodbye

Some good Chinese food

Doug, Sonny, Ludwick

Liz and John

Ah, tea time

Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane. If anyone has pictures they would like to share, let me know. 

Happy Fall

Jean

Howdy all you Flemings. Hope your summer went well. Mine was way too hot and humid and too busy. I think we probably all feel cheated this year with rain, flooding, heat, humidity, Maybe we should have a do-over.

For you all that read my once in a while blog, I would appreciate if you could get me either email addresses of yourself, your kids and possibly your sibblings or snail mail addresses, It has been suggested I do a survey to see what month is best for the Family Reunion. I want this task done by Christmas so that I can present the choice before you book vacation for next year. As for me, my everything will or has changed. I take possession of a new abode the end of October so hope to be all moved and snuggled up to my phoney fireplace by November 15th. In the meantime, I had to change my phone number as my number had also been given to a business and for the last six months it was driving me bonkers. I don't know how it could happen and neither Shaw or MTS could explain it,but my voice mail went something like this; You have reached 287-2882, this is a residential number. It is not a business number and it certainly is not DH Robbins Engineering. In the end I changed it. Since I chose to go back to MTS then my email changed also. If you want either of them or my new address - which may be a good idea in light of my request above, please leave me a comment and I will get it to you.

Hope you all have a good weekend and I will try to remember to post some more pictures next week.

Jean

An ending......

Because of a few items that have come up, we will have to postpone the family gathering until next year. I know some of you are very dissapointed (I know just the little kids), but lets use the rest of this summer and over the winter to mull over where and what the family gathering should be. I think that all the ideas that I presented and the ones that came out at the wedding are all feasible. So to that end, let us form a committe and get er done! Terri and Jen were so enthusiastic about doing minute - to - win it, that I think they should still handle that one. I will leave Colleen and Betty on Pinata duty and I was thinking maybe Justin could work on some shirts or something. Since so many of the Doug Tryon's have so much experience with working with kids, maybe some could take on the duties of coming up with races and what age groups you need. Most of us who talked at Tabi and Eric's wedding still think some of the "old fashion" races would be fun. So for that we need about a dozen old ties, and about a dozen gunny sacks. Would you want water balloon toss, and/or egg race? If someone would volunteer for the position of Race Director, I can come up with the ages of most if not all of the people. We also need to decide about food. There are some who still feel that a pot luck is the best solution. I think those who live in Calgary could still bring some item so that Jen can eat all day LoL! But for the rest and for whatever meat/protein we have and all the condiments, plates, buns, napkins, prizes, candy, and price of whatever spot we have should be shared by all. Now I know that all those in Calgary are going to call foul and say we have to pay and provide? So, I will leave it up to you all. Either way we will need to know how many are coming and if you are bringing something or not.

Now, where do you want to have it? The options I see are: a community centre, Bowness park, some other park in the city, how about Bow Valley Provincial Park, or Marilyn's cabin, or out at Banff, or up by Three Hills. We should be open to any and all options, but please remember that we will need to have some place for the little kids, Jim and Tookie to go if they need a time out, or just a nap.

To get your creative juices flowing - see below for some pictures from past gatherings.  More to come later.

So, until next time - Happy Trails To You..

Jean

Slowly, slowly....

things are starting to get ready for our big day. Terri T. has offered help and so since she is the first one, I am giving her the chance to help in whatever way she feels she would like to.  The way I see it, if we want this get together to be a great day, we need to break it down into either parts of the day or tasks.

For tasks we could break it down to food/beverages, games/contests, kid crafts, displays/stories/Cousin night out. Do we want to do some larger project and donate it to some charity? Does anyone want to bring instruments/voices and have a bit of entertainment? Oh how my mind goes with all these ideas floating around.

For parts of the day do we want to make our main meal together a type of brunch with snacks for later or do we want to have coff ee, tea and juice going with maybe some baking earlier in the day. How many games should we do and do you all want them just for the little ones or for everyone? Myself, I think everyone could be involved in some kind of game/contest. Does Bowness Park have somewhere where baseball could be played? Do we want to have a crib tournament for some of the older members? I saw this neat crayola bubble machine that I think the kids would love. Do we want the games/contests early in the day, or in the afternoon? You all know what your kids/grandkids schedules so we need to know. As we have the site from 8:45 a.m. until whenever, we can make the day what I hope will be pleasing to every one.

So to you all who have found this blog, please pass the address around fleming1912.blogspot.com and lets get some input into this. Once we have some input, then we can divy up the tasks better.

Until next time - get your comments in and your thinking caps on.   Jean

Hello - is anyone out there????

Well, I see you are all really game for this reunion. LOL Anyway would love to here some ideas from you all - even if you don't like the idea of coming to one.

We were thinking of a Pot-Luck type lunch with maybe a few extra's thrown in. So if you want to let me know what you would like to bring that would be a start. By the way for the out of towners, I have some ideas for you as it will be hard for you to make something while sitting in a hotel room. Suggestions would be: buy paper plates, napkins, cutlery, or how about a watermelon, or fruit tray, or veggie tray or cheese tray. How about some of the canyd for the pinata? There are probably a million ideas so get your creative juices flowing. After all it is only less than four months away.

Happy creating

Jean