Family Rituals are important. They help mode our character and perspective.

I grew up going to Lake Tahoe for our annual trip with my immediate family, aunts, uncles and cousins. The aunties would prepare our meals in our rental house. The kids would camp out in the backyard together. We would play softball and compete against each other.

We are still continuing this ritual with some of the children of the 2nd generation. The children are from elementary school age to young adults. The young adults even started a new tradition to cook one of the dinners during our stay.

We changed our activities to shopping, paddle boarding and board games as we matured over the years.

We are continuing our tradition by building our relationships even with the younger generation. We enjoyed a fun time playing the board game of “Sequence”. The younger children did not want to go back to their condo to go to bed, since they had so much fun.

I also spent time photographing my cousin’s family since their daughters came from Socal to spend time with everyone. It was a fun time to shoot their family along different sites around Lake Tahoe. We went after dinner. We were fortunately to catch the best sunset I ever witnessed at Lake Tahoe.

What lesson did I learn? Take advantage of togetherness time! Relationships are precious, and we need to make efforts to spend time together. Capture these moments with pictures. I photographed a bunch of family pictures of the big group.

But if I had not photographed my cousin’s family, we all would have missed out on the fantastic sunset. This sunset was a special blessing and symbolizes what we received from out short vacation at Lake Tahoe.