Family reunions are a great way to catch up with other members of the family when everyone lives so far away from each other. Usually once a year everyone gathers at a park or somewhere and spend time together. Many families will have shirts designed for everyone so that they will take home memorabilia from the day.
With so many people being out of work it may be hard to get everyone together for a reunion this year. Many families may not be able to travel to attend the function. Here are 3 ideals that you can do to still have a virtual family reunion.
Create a Family Book.
Notify every family member about creating a book about the current family events and send them out the tasks. Tell them that you want them to write anything that they want about their family, what is happening in the family this year, news and any other information that they would want to share with the extended family. Have them send photos of their family taken in the recent year and send it to one person who is assembling the book. Once you get back all the stories all you will have to do is assemble the book and upload it to a publisher on demand and make it available for the families to purchase or download for free. Websites like lulu.com can have it so that you can download it on the computer for free and look at it on the computer. If they would like a printed copy of the book, they can order and pay for one also. So this would fit any budget of family members. This doesn’t take much time to assemble once you get everyone’s information. It’s fun to assemble it and read up on the family members activities. In your email you will want to give them ideals of what to write about. Make each family their own chapter in the book.
Create a YouTube Channel of family videos
Create an account at YouTube where you can have everyone upload movie clips about their families. Send everyone the website, the username and password so that everyone in the family can add to it. Once you get everyone to upload you can watch it from your computer and see the family and how they have changed from the last year.
Another variation of this would be to have people send you their clips and you assemble them then send them out on a burned DVD. This would allow them to watch it on their televisions or computers. This is helpful if you have people that aren’t very computer literate.
Create a PowerPoint Slide Show.
Have everyone send photos of their families and create a PowerPoint show of the family. Once you have this created add music and upload it to a website for everyone to see. If its’ small enough you could also email it to everyone so that they can see it. Save it as a PowerPoint Show so that it auto-plays.
You don’t have to let the bad economic times keep you from enjoying your family this year. Even if everyone can not be together in person, they can still be part of the Virtual Family Reunion.
