Hall Reunion

In a past post, I talked about my mom being the youngest of 12 siblings, so our family in huge…to say the least.  Twice a year we all get together for a reunion, one of those always being the Saturday after Christmas.  We visit, eat, talk, eat, get reaquainted, eat some more and have a Chinese auction.  I’m not real sure why it’s called a Chinese auction, that’s just what it’s been dubbed.  Anyways, how it works is everybody brings an item (it can be anything, but not crappy stuff), then you buy as many tickets as you would like ($1.00=4 tickets),  write your name on your tickets and then place your tickets in cups labled for the items you would like to have.   After we all have  enjoyed some GOOD food the auction begins.  Usually my Uncle David and Aunt Linda do the auction, but this year I took over for Uncle David.  We take each item brought individually, dump all the tickets for that item in a bag and then have a smaller cousin draw a ticket.  Whoever’s name is on the ticket drawn gets the item.  Do you see how this works?  Luck of the draw.  At the very end all the tickets for all the items are put into one big bag and we draw names for cash prizes, from the money that was used to buy tickets.  It is SO much fun.  So after my cousin Mike passed away a few years ago, he was an artist and always brought a painting for the auction, I decided I would take over for him and always bring a painting.  This year I painted two cactus’, similar to an old painting of Mike’s that adorns our bathroom.  It was a pretty hot item, along with a dog basket my cousin Rhonda brought.   When the ticket was drawn by my little cousin Matthew, Rebecca (one of my closest cousins) had won the cactus’.   It was a great time had  by all and I look forward to next year.   Below is the cactus painting and the big winner, Rebecca with Harper.