Five generations of family all together at once, talk about a rare experience! When I had Lincoln, all of our family was so excited. Especially for my side of the family because he is the first grandbaby and the first great grandbaby for both sets of my grandparents.
But he also was my great-grandma’s first great-great grandbaby. Yep. You heard that right. Lincoln has a great-great grandma that is 93 and livin’ large. She recently stopped being on her local bowling team.
That means that we have five generations in a direct line that could all meet at the same time.
We had to get a picture!
My great grandma Betty, me, Lincoln, my dad Jared, and my grandma Judy. Five generations all together, pretty amazing.
You can obviously see where we got our good looks from.
My dad and Lincoln with his dad Ramon.
We met at Judy’s house in Arizona for the five generation pictures. It was the first time my grandparents or Betty had gotten the chance to see Lincoln. They had originally planned to come out to Denver a few months after he was born, but Judy had undergone a kidney transplant a few months prior and they were unable to come then.
Activity wise, it was a pretty easy-going trip. We are a five generation family of foodies, so we went to many local restaurants that my grandparent love and wanted to show us. I am a HUGE brunch fan and I particularly loved the small bistro we went to one morning where we sat by a huge window with a tall saguaro outside. My grandparents have excellent taste in food and have always believed in making us try things as kids. But even they were surprised when seven-month-old Lincoln was wolfing down the lox with red onions and capers and kept signing to give him more!
Later that week, Judy and I stood by each other in the kitchen. We wore bright patterned aprons to avoid stains from the popping oil and frying corn tortillas for the shells to her family-famous beef tacos. In the other room, Betty and my grandpa played with busy Lincoln. He practiced his first steps from coffee table to couch and I could hear my grandpa’s chuckles from around the corner.
In the mornings, my dad and I would take Link on long walks through my grandparent’s neighborhood and enjoyed the break from Denver’s winter snow. We pointed out the different types of cacti to each other and talked about books we were reading.
My uncle and cousin met us to go to Casa Grande national park, a large ruin from the Ancient Sonoran Desert People. I met up with an old friend from high school who also had a little boy about the same age as Link. We laughed and talked with each other as if we had never been apart, and the boys danced when she sang Baby Shark.
Each night we stayed up late playing card games (my grandparents are party animals) and my dad and I lost every single round.
Some of the best times we had were in the early evenings sitting and chatting. Judy is an artist, so her living room is always filled with drawings and paintings covering the walls and colorful collections of pottery on the shelves. Lincoln would sit on the rug and play with cooking utensils Judy had given him. My dad took out his phone to work on our family tree by adding multimedia elements like pictures, video and recordings. We would sit and ask Betty questions about her and her family’s life and record her.
Sidenote: Learn more about how to do this yourself at familysearch.org. Its’s free to make an account and get access to your family trees and learn about your family history. There is also an app, where you can upload “memories” of written stories, pictures and audio.
It was a surreal experience, sitting in that quiet room with the sun setting over the desert as Betty told stories that felt like an extension of my own life. I’m the third generation link in this growing five generation chain. Even though it wasn’t my story, I felt like I was a part of it because it was my family I was connecting with in new ways.
As Betty told about her mother baking dozens of pies in her kitchen each day to sell in the town, I excitedly thought about how I loved to cook and her buttermilk pie recipe my dad makes it each Thanksgiving. (I told you we were a family of foodies!) Or we laughed about how Betty’s father tried to teach her to drive when she was about 10 and she crashed the family car into a light pole! She ran upstairs crying thinking she was in trouble but he came up behind her laughing.
Betty’s Car Crash
My favorite story was when she told about my great grandfather (her husband) and his job printing classified documents on fighter ships for communication in World War II. Near the end of the war, he was asked to print a pamphlet in Japanese. They were notification pamphlets that US troops dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to warn the people about the bomb coming and telling them to evacuate. Local government had told the people that the pamphlets were lies and to ignore them. I had never even heard that part of history before and it gave me shivers to feel connected to it in a small way.
On the surface, the vacation was a handful of days to visit family and get the five generation photos. But it really was so much more! It was a week to become closer to people that I already loved, I reveled in the fun and came away better for it. As a new mom, I appreciated the wonderful way my grandma and great grandma had mothered their children and loved my baby now. I feel that you cannot help but love someone that loves your child that much. It has come to help me understand some of the love that they feel for my dad and I and makes me want to share that with others.
At some point when looking for your next great adventure, I encourage you to look for little trips or moments that could mean a lot to you and those you love. Maybe your children need to better know a family member. Maybe you’ve just lost touch with a good friend. Maybe you haven’t just sat and talked to you sibling for a while. Whatever it may be, don’t let life get in the way of these precious relationships! Make it a priority, make a plan and make it happen.
What is your next re-connecting trip? I would love to hear!
