Amanda
This summer my grandpa and one of his cousins organized an Ahlgren family reunion at a beach state park in Connecticut that he and his family had always gone to when he was a kid. My parents divorced when I was little so for a long time I didn’t really have a strong sense of family. I never experienced the big family get togethers and vacations that some of my friends told me about. Our grandparents would visit, or we would visit them, but for the most part my family was thinly spread out around the country so I would go years without seeing my uncle or my cousins, and at the same time my immediate family, while all in the same town, was divided between two houses. The reunion was the first time in at least 8 years that all of my close relatives (at least on my dad’s side of the family) would all be in one place. Although the Saturday of the reunion was rainy and 60 degrees—not exactly the best beach weather (but I still swam!! Who am I to pass up the ocean)—still around 100