Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 227 | family reunion: 60 people, 1 cabin

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

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Gosh, it's good to be here, don't you think? We are going to be talking today about our family reunion, and we wanted to do it now because it's fresh in our memories. We just got back from this, and it was an epic experience. So we want to tell you all about it, how we planned it, what we did, and what we would change in the future. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And let's see.

as we as we transition the signs here in the background thank you thank you Sean let me tell you a little bit of why we're here in our podcast studio and what we've been doing uh work-wise so we've been doing our couple things you want you help we've been doing our couple things podcasts we're now five years in to a couple things there you go been doing a couple things for five years having a blast with it uh we have moved that show to just Sean and I sitting down talking some nonsense, some good stuff. Yeah. We did a whole episode on postpartum, and we did a whole episode on grief, and traveling

with three kids. We've done a lot of different episodes, but we then just recently launched a second podcast that's our interview show called Second Cup, which you can see here with this sign. Both get filmed right here in the studio, and honestly, we've been degenerates with our main channel long form content and that's okay because what we're realizing is we can't do it all have you realize that yet i realize that a very long time ago have you realized that yet i um i'm just not realizing it excuse me thank goodness we have dominique here that says we're doing a great job great job sean thanks without further do though i think we roll in to planning the family

reunion. So let me give you a little background on this whole situation. I come from an epic family that I'm extremely grateful for. Okay. I'm just going to say that. That's not bragging. That's just me saying I'm proud of my family. Okay. For, oh my gosh, let's see, since 1960s, I want to say, grandpa, on my mom's side started this tradition of getting everybody together on Labor Day weekend. And so it's happened in different. areas in different ways with different activities but it's happened the vast majority of the year since it first started in the 1960s my grandpa passed the year we got married 2016 and I should say my family on my father's side is also epic it's smaller so it feels like a less

an order of an ordeal to get everyone together not small it's not that small I guess I have eight cousins on my dad's side, 12 cousins on my mom's side. And there seems to be more pomp and circumstance with that side of the family, usually. So anyway, grandpa died 2016. And for the last 15, 20 years, his four kids have been planning the family reunion. We've been doing it on a farm, and it's a fantastic time. Yes. We ride tractors, and we do hay rides, and we ride horses.

and we do bonfires and fish in the pond and now that generation is all like 70 years old themselves and it was kind of a year this year of passing the baton where now me and my 12 cousins who are all in our 30s had the responsibility of planning it because the generation above us has been doing it for so long and they're like if you want to if you want to keep doing it it's on you which I respect it's like you got to kind of have that self motivation to do it and so challenge accepted uh i have some fantastically impressive cousins shout out tom and lizzie and starting legitimately last year after the the last labor day get together we started talking about what it would look like if we planned it so i have this group text pulled up here january 21st 2000 uh 24

and this was when this was when the logistics really started so how we did it was me tom and lizzie and then ultimately sean because she's way more responsible than i am uh kind of broke up the whole project of getting 60 people together it's really 62 total yep no 63 total people including future babies yes the conjuring last rights On September 5th. I come down here, we need you out! Array! The Conjuring Last Rites, only in the September 5th.

Pumpkin is here at Starbucks. here at Starbucks and we're making it just the way you like. Handcrafted with real ingredients like our real pumpkin sauce and rich espresso sprinkled with pumpkin spice. It's full of real flavors you'll keep coming back for. Made just for you at Starbucks. And that includes four of my aunts and uncles, 13 of my generation,

30 of kids below us and then all of those people's spouses. We track in so far. Am I communicating this well? Yeah. Do we have any questions? Because we got Janet Johnson says we'll be answering questions. The answer to that is yes, Janet. And Zito lover says could not stay in a cabin with 60 family members.

You're both very brave. That was honestly some of the biggest feedback, which is why we wanted to kind of talk about this, is people were like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you would do that. I can't believe you all get along. But we did it. We all do get along. We all love each other so much. And I didn't really think about how rare that is.

It's very rare. And I'm thankful for it. So Tom, Lizzie and I broke this big project of getting 60 people together and to committees. Yes. And the goal is to spend all of Labor Day weekend together and have activities planned throughout. So what our thought was is we had to take. choose the location, and we had to choose programming, and then we had to figure out the family aspect of it, right? And so we called these committees the logistics committee, the activities

committee, and the nostalgia committee so that we could like talk about what a rare thing it is that we come from such a wonderful family that gets along. And our thought was this. Most of my cousins and siblings live in central Indiana. Shout out Hoosiers. And when we do something near where everybody lives, obviously it's convenient is the pro. And so people are like really excited and it's easy for people to get there. We said we're not going to do that though. We're going to choose a remote location so that everybody is forced to like be there and present. And no one's going to take their kids to soccer. practice or no one's driving back home at nights because they want to sleep in their own bed.

It's like, no, we're all doing this together. And it's like a jumping in the deep end commitment. So we started looking for cabins. And that's not an easy task to find like, all right, do you get... We needed 20 plus bedrooms. Yeah, we needed like 20, 23 bedrooms. At least. So do you get 20 hotel rooms? The bill on that is massive. And you'll never really be together. there's a couple places in indian like southern indiana northern kentucky uh that have like these almost uh compounds built out for purposes like this where teams or businesses or families will get together but their individual cabins kind of spread out over uh a lot so we didn't really like that idea also with cribs and babies and such young kids we didn't want them running in and out of like cabins and homes

and kind of being all over a large property. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, some people are more wilderness oriented than others. Would you say you're an outdoorsy person yet? I am. I just don't. I would just prefer to sleep inside a house.

Yeah, I get that. We did, we had a big summer, though. We went to East Tennessee and an RV, which was a magical experience. That felt like something we were to do more of. Shout out go RVing. And we'd love to hear as we're talking what you guys did this summer and your thoughts.

Already people are saying, like Zeta Lover said, just could not do this together as a family. Tainted Love said, I would want anything by the water. I get that. You know, it's really cool. Not to go on a tangent,

but like, I get that when you say, like, you just couldn't do it. But that's something that is so beautiful about our friends. family is for generations they have worked so incredibly hard. I mean worked to knit together a family that though different, like we might all have different political values or beliefs or like whatever, we all care so much about each other. And keeping our family strongly connected and together is very, very important.

Like, that is a value of the family. I don't care what's happening in your life. I don't care if we see different sides of something. We are going to keep our family strong. Yeah. Your grandpa did a phenomenal job at that. G2, which is like the generation after them, has done a phenomenal job at that.

and now G3 is, which is us, is seeing that importance of like having each other and staying closely knitted and closely intertwined and doing things like this. And it's just really special. And then to see now G4, which is like our children's generation. When she says 1, G2, G3, G4, it's Generation 1, which we call my grandma and grandpa.

It's literally the lingo of the family. We're generation 3, then generation 4 is below us. Yeah. now to see g4 like our children's generation be so closely tied to their cousins and care so much about them and want to spend time with them is really really special and I agree you could say a lot of you can say I just couldn't do it I just couldn't spend that much time with family like whatever but you have to understand that this is a byproduct of a lot of work and a lot of time and generations worth of saying family is important and we're going to invest our time

into it. And I'm curious your thoughts because you came from a smaller family. You're an only child. You're close with your cousins, but there's less of like the structure of the family. I don't know how to describe it other than like, hey, we're all going to get together and do this. It's like a real formal plan thing. What I'm appreciating is you don't really know what you got till it's gone. and I think losing grandpa, losing my dad this is what I grew up with so I'm conditioned to just like be used to this

and it is such an amazing thing that I don't want to take for granted and so what I love is when a cousin's in a pinch like my brother needed a call he needed some counsel and so he called my cousin and anytime anyone in the family

need something they call them the family member first And that's what I grew up with. So I'm like conditioned to it and a little insensitive to it. But I'm trying to like realize that that's not normal. I will also say too, it's not normal. It's not something that I grew up having either. But having even married into it and understanding like the closeness of the family, to give you an example, in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. in Paris, France,

when we woke up and Jet couldn't breathe because he had severe croup, the first person I called was one of our cousins shout out Liz who happens to be like an ER nurse and she got back to us immediately

she answered she was like at a banquet here in the U.S. and she's like what's up and I was like I have a question for you she's like I got you

what's up here's what I think's cool though the Bible talks about like kind of generational curses and I think if generational curses are a real thing so are generational blessings

and you look at like the New Testament opens up with genealogy 8% of the whole Bible is genealogy so like where you come from matters I guess I'm kind of getting to the old guy phase in my life where I'm doing Ancestry.com digging into all this stuff we'll talk about the nostalgia crew and all the stuff that I pulled together for our family reunion in a little bit but anyway it gets me pumped and I will say I've been a little challenge recently about being present with each other does make a difference And like the quantity of time does matter. And we have allowed ourselves to love this life we've built here in Nashville,

which we do love this place. It's difficult knowing that all of this family is in Indiana. So it's like we love it here. And anyway, that's just a thought. I will say though, general consensus has been, which has been a lot of our conversation with like proximity. You can live next door to someone and not see them and not be intentional with them. So we've been trying to be more intentional with the time that we get.

Someone did say it could be fun sharing time together, catching up, not to like jump forward to the nostalgia, but it was cool. We did spend time because there are so many of us, it's hard to like, and we are all very busy in life in different phases. It's hard to know what everyone's going through and what is new. and we spent a big chunk of time one day doing a catch-up session. It was in the theater at this house, hotel place, and one by one, each couple would come up and give a spiel five, five, ten minutes

of like what has been going on this past year, something we can be like... Helpful with. Yeah, something that we can help them with, something we can pray for, what's coming up in the future, something they're excited about, something like a high,

almost like the high-low buffalo type situation. Thank you for that comment, Angela. And last thing, just on my general thought of family, where this is like an election year, a lot of politics usually gets contentious at times. But I think that we are obligated to give our family the benefit that it out and to look for similarities with each other as family rather than differences. Everyone else, you're trying to point pretty much and like people do this, hey, you're different than me because of that or I don't want to see how that I am.

on that it's like no no no we need to look for the things that pull us together rather than the things that that pull us apart so a couple of questions yes how often do we do this so the big family this is our first year doing like a go away somewhere in travel we usually do a family reunion every single year but we are all together as a full family at least four times a year With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

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which is our kids' generation. My brother guy just started organizing that. We'll probably interview him just so that we could share that because that was a huge win. He needs to be on second cup anyways. I agree. Oh yeah, because he introduced us. shout out guy and he's a elite athlete yeah that thing that you forget about um but yeah we see each other probably at least four times here the whole family easter we see each other too yeah everyone christmas yeah thanksgiving so it's probably five at least um yeah and then someone said thank you sean i'm now yawning i don't know what it is about this studio i think it's because i finally can relax to not be super overstimulated

that I just literally I think I've yawned 20 times Oh shoot I've been slacking on my job With switching cameras babe My gosh We love this studio And are very grateful to have it

By the way On our interview show Second Cup tomorrow We're interviewing And releasing the interview We did with Koston Mayor Shout out Austin and Meredith Had a blast with them

Back to the logistics of this though Before we do that Can we jump into some questions because we have a lot of questions circulating. There's a lot of things going on. You're pumped about the questions. I love it. Everyone needs to know our thoughts on the Dancing with the Stars lineup

that was just announced this morning. It is top of the news. Okay. Hit me. I am absolutely obsessed with Iona Mar. Ion Amar. Yeah. And everyone says we need to get her on the podcast. Yes.

She needs to win Dancing with the Stars. Either her or Stephen has to win Dancing with the Stars. So if you're watching this, I need you to vote. I need you to do everything for these two because they need to be the top two and one of them needs to win. Who else are you excited about?

Stephen. Stephen, Pommel horse, Steve. Who, can I go on a tangent about this guy? I have to go on a quick tangent about Iona and Steve because they are, for them to be two massive icons in the world right now, I think is the coolest thing in our culture at the moment

because Stephen he is people are calling him like Clark Kent so within men's gymnastics men's gymnastics has had a hard time gaining attention like women's gymnastics so right now

to have a men's gymnast be an icon of world culture one is like so incredibly cool for the sport and two to have him be him glasses rubics cube just like embracing his nerdy qualities and like being so popular for it i think changes the lives of millions of kids in the next generation and that makes me so happy as a parent big fan to stephen and then iona just like women's empowerment body image strength changes the lives of generations

to come with little girls and she rocks it everything she stands for is so cool we got a lot of comments about sean being on another season of dancing with the stars are they doing another all-star season i have no idea where a lot of a lot of people were asking us but stephen iona i will be in we will be in the audience for you two at some point this either any other questions you want to address oh sorry because you're excited about this whatever happened to the content house people want to know things changed um we were really excited about it but uh i don't know if you've kept your finger on content houses recently they haven't really worked out that well so uh it's important to pivot and we did so

um and last thing kind of ties into the reunion how do you promote independence with your kids while still keeping them safe does anyone else feel like the back to school season can feel chaotic? Oh, yes, which is why this year I'm simplifying things as much as I can, like only using Rubber Made Brilliance products for the kids, and honestly, our own lunches, dinner leftovers, and food on the go. Talk to me. The amount of time we spent last year cleaning up spilled food from containers that didn't work is more than I'd like to admit, but not this year. Yeah, it's out with the old and in with the award-winning Rubbermaid Brilliant's food storage that is 100% airtight, leakproof, stain resistant, and odor

resistant. But not only that, it's also shadow resistant. Not to mention, the lids have built in vents for splatter-free microwaving. Sure do. As you may have seen in some of our recent videos, we've been using Rubber Made Brilliance plastic containers a lot because we don't exactly trust our kids with glass containers yet. And they've been awesome so far. There's no spills or leaks. And even have dropped on the floor, which happens quite often, to be honest, or chucked across the front yard, which we did. Trust us, it doesn't leak or spill at all. We really did have zero spills.

Plus, they are BPA-free and dishwasher safe, so cleaning them is so easy. Their containers come in a variety of sizes for any food storage need. Plus, brilliance containers just launched in convenient plastic bowls, which you will definitely be using. Honestly, the video series we did for this, testing these claims was really fun, and it held up. But anyway, Sean, tell the good people listening. where they can buy their own. Gladly. The Rubbermaid Brilliance collection is available for purchase starting as low as $6.99 at various

retailers like Amazon, Target, and Sam's Club. You can also head to Rubbermaid.com to learn more about their full collection and where to shop. Here's to simplifying your daily routines with us by using Rubber Made brilliance. There's, uh, I need to look into this before I really start touting it, but like this concept of free range parenting, you know? is we establish hard boundaries of whatever it is. Like you can ride your bike here or you can do this on the play set. And we like try to, it requires a good bit of thoughtfulness and awareness.

And just like establish the boundaries. And then we kind of let them use that as a sandbox to do a lot of whatever they want in it. Yeah. Safely. So we're like supervising them. But I think I have a tendency to probably be like ultra hands. on and want to be just like in the nitty gritty. This has helped me figure out a system to like let them navigate their own way a little

bit more. Or even like we have a gated yard and I want them to be able to have the freedom to like go outside and play. But we also creepishly have cameras everywhere outside so we can watch them at the same time. Yeah. But if you have ideas or suggestions, please let us know. Okay. Back to the family reunion logistics.

we started doing calls for this frequently it was like kind of a standing weekly call that we would do after the kids go down and we had to do kind of curating potential cabin spots and location spots so the first vote we sent out to all of my 12 cousins was are you good with a four-hour drive you're good with an eight-hour drive and we let people vote and then we understood that people were willing to make the drive. And we just did majority rules on that. It also helped us start to communicate and build excitement for the trip in itself.

This was back in like January. Yeah, we sent out a lot of polls, like what weekend would work, what vibe, what location. So we ended up doing like Charleston, Pigeon Forge, Indianapolis. And Kentucky. Yeah.

Yeah. And then once, we charged the location we rallied everybody to see hey can you clear this weekend and make sure you can make it they said yes we did which was super exciting again this is why you had to plan it so far out because with this many people inevitably someone usually has something booked within like three to six months so we had a plan it nine months ahead also tainted love is saying you needed a planning committee for 60 we had one which was three assigned generation three kids which is like our generation to do everything.

Yeah. And then we reserved the spot. And at that point, it's like, all bets are off. It got serious. And at that point, we got the floor plan for the cabin. And there was 21 rooms with a pretty epic kitchen that had like these dual islands. It had this awesome communal space that everyone could gather in. And what we did was we got the floor plan for the cabin and just assigned rooms to the families and told people where they were staying.

so that there wasn't like a pick and choose or people felt like they got the short and the stick. It was just like, this is what we thought would be most logical and communicated that to the family. Yes. So with the activities, we wanted to have enough scheduled

that it was like structured, but not too much that it was like hour by hour and people were overwhelmed and fatigued with all the activities. So we had on Friday, We played card games with the adults after the kids went down because people were kind of rolling into town. We had a ton of arts and crafts just constantly out for the kids at all times of the day. Which was awesome.

We had on Saturday family Olympics so that it included drawing a picture in three different teams. Was it three or four teams? we divided up in the four teams everyone got a wristband we drew a picture and we all voted on which picture was the best we did tug a war which is hilarious we did like a who can go the fastest relay race with a beach ball between your belly the teams that we had selected though we kind of split up all siblings all families all spouses and put them on four teams for the entire weekend we ordered wristbands of different four different colors and you wore your wristband all all weekend so when it came to like cleanup crews um who was on dish duty who whatever it was

it was all based off of colors and it had the equal amount of generation two three and four people on each team yeah we try to divvy it up so that you weren't just with your siblings or your immediate cousins it was a nice mix and i think tom did a great job at being thoughtful with that um there's also let's say BB gun shooting with that And a bunch of ridiculousness. On Saturday night, we did, was that family movie night? Oh, no, that was the skit night, the game night that Jacob put on. And it was like this game show that was hilarious.

And the kids were part of that. It was probably like a half hour, 45 minutes. Sunday morning we did Family Church, which was like a quick message from Blair, who did a great job. It was fun too when we were delegating all of these different roles for like the nostalgia team. Um, logistics, food. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant. Or is it croissant? No matter how you say it.

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So we just said, this person's in charge of that. If you want something, talk to them about it. So Sunday, we did the church. Sunday afternoon, we did, let's see, Pool Olympics, which was funny. We did like watermelon water polo. And that was like crafts too. And so it was like, I think the perfect amount of programming,

you could tell that by the third day, people were starting to get, like, fatigued and wanted to just like veg out on the couch a little bit. I thought it was the perfect amount of time just kind of filling it with activities and food and space to kind of like talk and hang. Yeah.

It was a wonderful retreat. And it was really like Friday afternoon to Monday morning. Mm-hmm. And let's see. The last part of it is I was on nostalgia committee. And so what the really fun project for me was was to like try to figure out how do we talk about why our family is special throughout the weekend in different ways. So we had different

drawings around the house, like Sean said, and one of them was like this big tarp that was like Palmer family reunion and all the kids were coloring it in. And it just like kind of subconsciously hits home. They're like, this is the Palmer family. We're a part of it. We did interviews with one person from my generation with my aunt and uncle. one person from my generation sat down with each of my aunt and uncles and sat and interviewed them for an hour just about my grandma and grandpa how they were raised memories from their early life just to pull out these stories uh we also did a big we printed out a big family tree so that everyone knew everybody's name everybody knew whose kid was who everybody knew kind of like birthdays and it kind of is a conversation starter we have new people who have married into the family and it's just our family has grown so fast that we wanted that kind of like education for everyone. You also did a wonderful night where we went into the theater and got to watch like a compilation of the past couple years of events we've done as a family.

And it was really fun to watch the kids get excited and say, oh, I remember fishing with everyone. Or, oh, I remember Palmer Camp or whatever it was. Yeah, we've talked about this before. My grandpa was big into capturing things with video. My dad was, and what we do, I think, on a day-to-day basis with podcasts and YouTube video, it's just an extension of that, like a modern day application of that, but it's cool to like not only record all these clips from the family gatherings, but make them something that

is shareable and can be watching the future, which is why I love YouTube, separate topic. But it does feel like when you're able to sit and reflect on the Palmer Family Summer Camp and watch that together while we're at the Palmer reunion, it feels like momentum is building, which is really cool. and it kind of it kind of just like captures that moment in a special way so we did that we did the sharing thing like shan talked about where everyone from each family shares something i think that's an important part of things and we also gathered all my dad's home videos old home videos from all of these past decades worth of palmer family reunions and just made this four hour long youtube video that we had on loop in the background in the living room of where we were staying and one of my favorite moments was sitting down with one of my uncles and him just watching this and like riffing off all these old memories that like he probably hadn't thought of in years because he was watching these old clips he's like oh my gosh that's that's

that old 1937 car we had or that's that's that's a little neighbor we used to spend all that time with and oh my gosh there's your mom whatever like she was very good at volleyball and all these different things. It like curated and pulled out a ton of these stories that I just found, I don't even know why I like it. I just find it special and captivating. And it's like those stories could have just died with that generation, but now they kind of live on in a special way. I do feel passionate about this because a couple different reasons. One, I feel grateful. But two, there's like all these studies that say, if you know about your family history, then you're set up for success in a bunch different ways. And so that's what we're trying to do and set our kids up for passing the

baton onto them. And that takes intentionality that I've not really been used to until this weekend. I will say, I feel like the cabin was a perfect pick. It was so special to have everyone together under the same roof and have all these kind of unintentional collisions happen with each other. So you wake up and you're the first one up and there's my aunt, who's, sitting in the kitchen too because she woke up early and now you have like this little conversation that otherwise wouldn't happen. They had a movie theater in there that was great for the kids to watch movies but also for us to do family meetings. They had an arcade that was fun for the kids. They had an indoor pool which was great because it rained. They had the big

family room, an epic kitchen. Sean ordered all these groceries from Walmart. Shout out Walmart pickup. That was clutch. We literally, what did they say was the second biggest delivery? Yeah. Second biggest order that they've had yet. we got how many eggs almost 300 eggs 300 eggs we got like 10 things of salsa 12 bags of chips a lot of food a lot of food and that was only for breakfast and snacks because we catered in lunch and dinners but it was amazing it was really fun and all of my cousins impressed me with their diligence their organization their playfulness I really really value that in our family and I hope we can keep this going so trying to think are we missing

anything oh would we do it again absolutely I would do it every year me too yeah I think our family has settled on we'll do it every other year because it is such a not an imposition but like trying to travel that far and get everyone's schedules and take time off from work when we're already doing a week of summer camps and stuff makes sense, but I would do it every year. And we all get along, and I think that's a partial blessing, and I also think that's partial practice of being present with each other, practicing respect. I think we've been beneficiaries of people ahead of us having modeled that for us, and we're going to try to keep that going. So that's all I have. We did a debrief call last night with my cousins.

to try to like get all the feedback together and set us up more for success in the future. But all in all, it was a home run. It was ridiculous, hilarious, and amazed, precious all at the same time. Thank you for being a part of it, babe. Absolutely. Thank you for being a part of the family. Thank you for letting me.

If you have any questions, let us know. It was a blast, and I do feel passionate about this. stuff. So see you next time. I'm Andrew. I'm sure.