Being surrounded by your kids is the most endearing thing, especially on a significant birthday.
One mother’s 70th birthday came as a complete surprise. Given that her eight children lived in different states, it didn’t seem possible that they could all be together for the celebration.
But that’s just what they did. Her kids pulled off a memorable family reunion in spite of all the obstacles.
It was not an easy task to plan the unexpected event in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Anyone who has siblings understands how difficult it is to maintain secrecy in a large family.
One sibling, Tamara Weatherbee, says, “It was pretty hard, especially since some of us live near her. We were most worried about our dad accidentally spilling the beans.”
However, the true obstacle arose when their father fell ill a few days prior to the scheduled journey.
“And my mom kept trying to postpone the trip for his sake, but he was determined to go to Tennessee to have their ‘trip alone’ so it was super hard for him to convince her to still go with him,” according to Weatherbee.
Her father was determined to make the trip happen in spite of the near-miss.
“My dad asked us a couple months ago in a group text that didn’t include my mom, and within 10 minutes we all were down to clear our schedules and go,” Weatherbee adds.
Some of the siblings arranged to fly in from Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and Oklahoma with everyone on board.
But the surprise’s position was no coincidence.
“We had done a sibling trip a couple years ago in Gatlinburg, and it was really fun,” Weatherbee remembered. “But our one sister couldn’t make it so we thought it would be nice to go again with everyone there.”
It’s not easy to plan an event for a family this size, especially when you have to juggle the schedules of eight siblings.
“It usually is very tricky and takes us forever to decide on dates and where we are going to meet,” Weatherbee said. “But since it was our mom‘s 70th, we let our dad pick the dates and we were all in.”
When the time came, the outcome was nothing short of poignant. “On our way there, a couple of us siblings rode together, and we were like, ‘Do you think she will cry when she sees that we are all there?’ We had no idea how much this would mean to her,” Weatherbee acknowledges. Their mother, however, was taken such by surprise that she burst into tears of happiness.
This family makes it work despite the distance, demonstrating that maintaining communication is a top priority for them.
“Pretty sure it is written in a contract somewhere that we have to be on our family vacation every June. We all get together, my mom rents a place, and we have to be there,” Weatherbee says. “With all of the parents, siblings, spouses and kids, we have 44. But besides that, we keep in contact daily.”
They have an unbreakable relationship, and for this family of eight, being close goes beyond simple physical closeness; it’s a shared dedication to upholding solid familial bonds.
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Seeing all of her kids together was a present that the birthday mother would always cherish.
“It was like stepping back in time when life was much simpler. No spouses, no grandkids, just the original eight,” she stated. “There is no joy like having all of your children around the dinner table again.”
