I was updating the family spreadsheet a few weeks ago and was somewhat shocked to see that our family has been blessed to have grown to almost 100 people. 100 individuals that are scattered across the US, living their lives, but still connected by the traditions and values that always brought us together in Kansas City, Matthews, Gallatin, and many other locations. You sometimes hear people joke about their large families and how they’re going to fit 20-30 people under one roof for a meal; imagine if we all managed to come together under one roof now.
Our weekend at Royal Acres was full of what defines us as a family. Lots of fun, good food, great cards, and a lot of emotion. More emotion this time than at other gatherings. It’s strange, but to be honest, I personally felt more at peace leaving Aunt Becky’s for the last time than I thought I would. Why? Because if anything the weekend reinforced that as long as all of us keep in touch as a family it really doesn’t matter where happen to choose to gather, we’ll always make that place special. Sure, it was sad to realize cousins will never fill up every corner of the living room floor again, nor will we ever play volleyball by car light and break a water line, but we’ll still make great memories.
I ran back across the Schleicher cookbook today, and had to laugh a little at some of the following lines from the intro:
“Proficient at many wonderful things: we can mix all our colors & we’re wicked poker players. We know the very best move for UNO.”
“From them [Grandma and Grandpa Schleicher] we learned the value of family.”
The Schleicher Family Cookbook
Funny how things really never change, wherever we are. We are family. We make a house a home. Any house, anywhere. Even if it’s a temporary stay, we make it a home. We still play those card games, we still sing those random songs, and when we get together now we are teaching the values we were taught to our children.
So that brings me to why we’re even on this goofy website. When cleaning out the old “prize” closet at Royal Acres, some of us ran across an old binder of Boar Reports. Paper then, but those newsletters were the start of keeping us connected. Of course, they’ve grown to weekly emails now, but in this connected world where every company wants your attention, 1 email out of sometimes 100 a day can be hard to catch. We’re not, by any means, replacing those emails. I for one will go hunt that email down on Mondays, but what we are doing is trying to add more ways to connect and stay connected. This site is a bit of a bonus; I bought the domain name, so may as well use it.
We’ve got two more ways to stay connected. First is a social media server, self-hosted and private with its own app. The Mastodon social media server is most similar to Twitter in style and functionality. There are two ways to join up. The first is to follow an invite link (you’ll find that in my email responding to the 4/3 Boar Report). Follow the link, confirm your email, and you’re done. If you don’t get the confirmation email or something happens and it hangs up, let me know and I can resend the confirmation email, or confirm it manually. The second option to join is to just head over to schleicher.social (or click the Mastodon logo at the bottom of this page) and follow the create account options. You’ll get an email to confirm your account; once your email is confirmed your account will have to be approved, but you’ll get another email once that’s done. A full step-by-step is found on this page.
The second way to connect is this website. The Boar Reports will make their way here, we’ve got birthdays, anniversaries, and important events on a calendar, photo galleries, and a page for anyone to add a post (you’ll have to have an account to post to keep down on the bots, though). If we can think of anything else to add to enhance and connect in better ways, we’ll do it.
So, we hope to see everyone here and keeping the tradition alive. A chapter ended with Royal Acres, but a new chapter is just beginning.
Author: Zack
Pharmacist, tech guy, gamer, fixer. Good at a little bit of everything.