S.O.S.

No this doesn't have anything to do with the Jonas Brother's but it does have to do with family. Recently there has been a lot of talk about ancestors at our house and my husband and I have begun to search for our missing ancestors (a.k.a. genealogy) , and through that found a family history challenge for all ages on wiki. family search.
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Main_Page from there click on the highlighted words "family history activities page" in the News and Updates section.

The Summer of Sleuthing Challenge has links to make family trees (standard or Tigger-iffic versions), as well as a coloring page and tips on interviewing relatives. That could get awfully creative! Maybe you could make a book, or a family newspaper, or a video, or a slideshow with pictures and music? I have even seen journals that have questions in them so one can write things down. Sometimes it is hard to think of things on the spot, for the interviewer and the interviewee. The important thing is to start asking questions like any good sleuth would do!
They also suggest keeping a journal of your finds and experiences, perhaps with your family.

Several years ago my dad interviewed his mother over the period of a few days. He thought of some questions to spark her memory and just let her talk while the video recorder ran and if they needed to they checked dates and added it the next day. That is really priceless to me now, especially since none of my children got to meet my paternal grandmother. She passed away when Lauren was a baby and we lived overseas.

Here comes a story (forgive my wordiness).... I didn't get a long well in my teenage years with my maternal grandmother.Later in my teens one day, just as an experiment - you know, the kind that adults tell you to try to bridge the generation gap - I asked her what she did when she was a teenager for fun. I think she was a bit surprised, and I didn't know if I really wanted to hear, but as she told me about her and her friends gathering up things from their homes and riding horses to the beach and roasting corn in a fire, I found myself very interested and realized my grandma was kind of cool. She had done a lot of things that I could see myself being interested in. I knew that I got some artistic talent from her, but didn't think, or refused to think, there was anything else until then - we were actually kind of alike! (Including the fact that we both thought we were right. My mom, wisely already knew this. :) Not that I ever went and roasted corn on the beach, but the way she described her outings with friends reminded me of myself and my group of friends. I was able to see her in a way I never had before and my heart softened towards her from then on, even if we never became chums. I just kept finding more and more things we had in common. Even after she passed, going through her things with family (a lot of rocks- no wonder we all love rocks- it must be genetic!) and then reading some of her journal and a paper she had written about cats for a class she took in her 60's. I realized there are a lot of things I admired about her life, from her fearlessness to her unashamed quirkiness. Quirky is okay- we are all quirky in our own ways, aren't we?

Perhaps you might have time during your family vacation to ask a few questions? It doesn't have to be a huge production, but learning a few things about our family members can really help us appreciate them. Not to mention, it gives us a glimpse at ourselves that we may not see. A-AND using the dates from your family tree can direct you to some historical fiction at the library that might give you a better idea of what life was like when your grandma was growing up. What if she was a little girl when Kit Kitteridge was? Everyone has a story...