Every three years the decedents of Samuel Smith and Bridget Murphy get together to celebrate our family heritage and to fight for bragging rights on the volleyball court. This year the reunion was located in the beautiful Chicago suburb of Naperville and we decided to use this as a launching point for a two-week road trip to explore areas of the Midwest that we have not been to, including the upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin.

In our quest to see all 50 states together as a family, this trip will allow us to check off Illinois and Wisconsin.

I am so glad that we started the trip off with a few days of visiting extending family and watching the kids play with their cousins. Most of our hotel time spent catching up around the pool as the kids splashed around.

The family reunion was an absolute blast and kicked off with a meet and greet over Chicago deep dish pizza. There was such a relaxed as social vibe that it was easy to say hello to extended family that I had not seen since the Jamestown Reunion six years ago and to meet some new faces from other branches of the Smith clan.

Noted highlights from this party include Linda being the human buzzer during the Family Feud gameshow and team “I Wet My Pants” buzzing in during Jeopardy to answer the question.

The following day we met at the beautiful downtown Riverfront Park and fueled up on Chicago style hot dogs and the beef sandwiches they’re famous for then hit the volleyball court.

This year was not our year with the majority of our team being under the age of twelve but Smith family beware that as our yellow team youngsters grow we will dominate the volleyball court again!

The day ended with a boisterous dance party after family shared hilarious stories of past reunions and celebrated the family members that could not make the reunion.

Fishing

Me(Jonah) and Shane(Dad) went fishing at the family fishing tournament. We were not catching anything but then we saw a guy fishing in the other side of the lake. We took the opportunity to take the other side of the rocks he was on. About 5 minutes some other people from my family showed up and then the other guy on the other side of the rocks moved. So the other people took his spot and we fished together. At first. Nobody caught anything. But after 10 minutes we started getting bites. I caught the first fish and then all of us started to pull up fish except one kid named Max. When he finally did he let his dad try to get the fish if the hook but it slipped off. He hit his dad and then called him an idiot. Be got a timeout. Soon my dad and I had to go and we showed are results. When I saw the people later and the volley ball tournament I found out that they placed second with a 7 inch large mouth bass. The Top was a 9 inch large mouth bass. We had a great time fishing with my dad.PS. The fish were under 6 inches the ones me and my dad caught.)