Sunday, October 4, 2015

Whitfield Family Reunion 2015

Saturday was an exciting time as we gathered with our cousins for the Whitfield Family Reunion!
Mother is now the oldest living Whitfield with our cousin, Paula, next in age. All the other aunts and uncles are gone now.


I wasn't thinking as well as I should have been about taking good photos.
In years past when we had the Hancock/Carlton reunions (this was my Granny's side of the family) we always had a huge group photo.
NEXT year I am going to bring Louis Dean's fancy camera and take one of everyone all together - instead of only when we were eating!!!


This is Cousin Anthony......he is the one who has made these reunions happen.


We all brought something to auction off in order to pay for renting the dining hall at Mineral Wells State Park. We had a lot of fun bidding and everyone went home happy! I think we made enough to pay for the expenses.


My sweet sister held up the painting I did so I could get a good shot of the table!
That's what sisters DO!


After the auction we had a little musical entertainment!


Louis Dean and I sang 4 duets and I use the word 'sang' rather loosely!
Still, we all had a good time!


We spread out all the vintage photos and tried to make some sense of them.
Instead, we looked through them and reminisced and then piled them all back in the bag!


The music continued while we browsed the photos and visited.
Andie played her flute with her cousin holding the music!
That's team work!


Little Ricky is just one day older than the quads and he went up to Louis Dean and asked if he could play his guitar.


Louis Dean was SO happy he said yes!


This was the highlight of the reunion for my husband and he has been talking about Ricky ever since!!!


That little boy has some serious talent and he spent a solid half hour or more strumming without stopping. Louis Dean said he has never seen a child that young with such amazing concentration!


These two bonded for life back when they rode back from Katy, Texas together after the quads were born!


It was an exceptional day with our cousins!


Pam is the grandmother of that little musical genius!


Mother had a good time!
I wish I had taken a photo of her and Paula....the two oldest at our family reunion that day.

Deanie sent me some of the photos she had scanned into her computer.



Linton A. and Myrtle Mae Whitfield
 were both 17 years old when they married.


They were cotton farmers out in west Texas.
Their three children were Truman, Irene and Pauline.
Pauline is our mother and she is the youngest in the photo.
Truman is the oldest and Anthony is his son.


Irene, Pauline and Truman.

Granny and Granddad.


Family Portrait......


and a later one.


Granddad and Irene's daughter, Shirley, who passed away long years ago.
Joyce and Paula are daughters of Truman and Joyce is the GREAT grandmother of that little Ricky.

I have a TON of research to do but the bag of old photos will be a lot of help!

After the reunion we decided to do a few more fun things on our way home!




First we stopped at the Farmer's Market in Weatherford!


Love the sights and smells!!!


For some reason I even love the smell of hay!


Wish I could have bought several of these mums!


This place was as you come into Weatherford on Hwy. 180.


I forgot the name of the place but it's like a feed store or horse and tackle store.


In Fort Worth I made two stops. One was Hobby Lobby and the other a liquor store.
This is Goody Goody's on Hulen and it is beautiful inside!
Louis Dean found all sorts of interesting things......


like this moonshine!
Don't even THINK about it, I told him!
I was in search of just a few specific items.....like vanilla vodka. I have been reading about putting vanilla beans in vodka and making your own vanilla extract. It may be too late to make this for Christmas this year, though.


I close this post with birthday cards from Nita and Deanie that made me cry when I read them.
I really do love my family!


We had such a good day that we didn't want the day to end......
so we squeezed a few more minutes out of it sitting on the kitchen deck with our evening glass of wine. Saturday was a really good day!






8 comments:

Deb said...

You had s great weekend! Wasn't the weather beautiful!

Vee said...

That was a fun read. Seems as if you are fleshing out the family tree. Your grandparents were such a cute couple. Just 17. They must have been scared to death. Kudos to the cousin who made it all happen and to all of you who participated. Gotta get to the PC for some video watching.

MadSnapper said...

you have a really big family reunion. i think the most we had before everyone passed on was about 30. we are now down past half that.

Deanna Rabe - Creekside Cottage Blog said...

Beauty runs deep in your family!

These are times to be treasured, for sure!

Love the photos of your adventures on the way home.

Deanna

Luann said...

I see Lanita in the young Pauline family photo. Very pretty. Her eyes and expression I have seen through the years in many of Nita's photos. Hurrah for Family Reunions.

Carole said...

What wonderful old photos! Cheers

Angie said...

What a wonderful reunion. Looks like LD definitely made a new buddy! I'm so glad you all got the opportunity to get together. Our family don't do reunions anymore and I think it's so sad.

Penny said...

Oh wow, how amazing to get everyone together like that. Those old photographs will be such a great help with your project Linda. I am looking again at those two babies of 17.... Married, gosh, they look so young!! X