Every year we try to make it to the King family reunion, which is typically over the last weekend in April. If you're paying attention to the date, you'll realize that that was just two weekends ago. And, this year, instead of just attending we hosted it! Now who is this King family and how do we fit in? It's my dad's mom's side... so the people there are primarily my grandparents (and the rest of my immediate extended family, so uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.), grandaunts and granduncles, their kids (my first cousins once removed) and their kids (second cousins to me). Sounds complicated? Yeah, it is a bit. But it's also a good time! Lots of food, lots of talking, and lots of fun. And a lot of people. We host parties pretty often, but we don't usually have 28 people over. That said, hosting that many wasn't actually that bad. Sure it was work, but they also helped a ton with clean up, brought food, and basically made the whole thing great. Hard to beat that.
The biggest part of hosting was getting enough tables and chairs, plus providing the main part of each meal. We wrangled four folding tables and about 30 chairs and stuck them all in the front of our great room where the armchairs usually sit. As for the meals, I smoked a bunch of pork and chicken for Saturday lunch (and holy crap, it all turned out to be pretty amazing), homemade ice cream for Saturday evening, then had a fish fry on Sunday. The whole thing went really well and we (along with everyone else, I think) had a great time. For any of you reading that were also in attendance, thanks so much for coming and making this a great event! But enough talk... here are a bunch of pictures I took over the weekend. Better, right?
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| This reunion is so official it has banners that whoever is hosting can use |
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| Pork about an hour after putting it on the smoker |
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| Five hours of smoke, ready to be wrapped and finished in the oven |
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| Chicken breast with a rub and smoked for three hours |
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| Homemade BBQ sauce with a few store options as well |
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| Little Tim stealing some chocolates |
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| Homemade ice cream in a two gallon hand-crank freezer |
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| It helps to have someone stand on the freezer as it gets harder to churn |
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| Most of the guys took a turn cranking |
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| Even me |
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| The delicious end results |
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| Think we have enough dessert? |
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| The annual "swap meet" where everyone brings stuff to trade / give away |
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| Frying fish on Sunday morning |
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| We ended up with two big trays of fish |
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| And made hush puppies too! |
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| Three of the King siblings, plus my grandpa |
And that's all for now. We've still got some work to do on a few projects around the house before you see them, but hold on and we'll be back with those soon. Thanks for reading!
