"Did your family have a favorite song they would sing?"

My immediate family doesn't have a song that we sing, but what I do remember is that we had and still have this wonderful group of family friends that we all grew up with.  The Heath Family: Ruth, Steve, Chris, Peter, Michael and Theresa, The Pokorny Family: Karl, Joyce, Sonja, Monica and Jason, The Hill Family: Jack, Marcia, Mal and Ryan and the Divine Family... that would be us. Our families have all been good friends since we were young kids (late 1970's to early 1980's) would be about the time we all met.  Our family moved to Minnesota in 1978, so it was sometime after that.  Anyhooo,

We used to have pizza parties at the Ole Piper Inn, downtown Wayzata, and we would always spend Christmas Eve at the Heath household making Fondue... yummy.  Once we all started growing up and moving out of the house our gatherings became less but we still to this day seem to manage a gathering around Christmas time that the entire crew... the grown-ups, the grown-up kids and all of their kids, get together at Ruth and Steve's house for a Christmas brunch.  We have lots of good food, Mimosa's and great company.  It is never a dull moment at this get together.  It is pure entertainment.  When you get all of the Heath boys in a room together... look out!  We get loud, the kids get louder and then comes the dreaded.... (yet we all do it and laugh)... 12 Days of Christmas!!!

Marcia Hill is our singer/entertainer each year.  She performs in show choirs etc so she LOVES to sing.  We all split up into months of our birthday and then we sing the 12 days of Christmas.  Sonja's husband is a music teacher so he plays the piano for us.  It usually takes about 30 minutes to get organized and figure out just exactly how the song goes again.  Once we get it, we sing and we laugh and then we all take photos of the families and kids.  When it is time to go we are usually ready to go because your ears are usually ringing because it is so LOUD in this house with all of the people.. it's not just the numbers that make it loud... it's the group of people... we joke, we laugh and usually find someone to pick on, that person usually ends up being my dear friend Mal, occasionally Mollie but she has grown up so she isn't such an easy target anymore.

When we head over to start the party it's usually on Sunday and we are usually heading back to Iowa so we say this every time.."we aren't going to stay long, so we can get on the road" but guess what, we always end up staying long but it's always worth it.  I have years of memories with this wonderful group of people and I hope it continues for a very long time!  So that is my long version of a "song" that we sing, it's more than that, it's family.