So I thought a website would be a good way to communicate with our Ballenger-Dray-Hall Families that will make up the 1st Annual Ballenger Family Beach Bash Weekend. I really don’t know what I’m doing publishing this blog thing, so we’ll be learning as we go.

For some time I’ve been thinking about how the Ballenger family would participate in Dado’s (Edna Farrior Ballenger) extended family gatherings, ordinarily to celebrate Christmas and Uncle Hugh’s Birthday in August in Little Washington, NC at Bill and Marlene Farrior’s cottage on the Pamlico River.

It was always the first Sunday in August and started w/ swimming, water skiing and boat rides, and then a big Pot Luck lunch on the lawn and under the trees. It was a great way to spend time with family remembering old times, playing on the water, seeing the elders and the young’uns laugh and discuss what was going on in their lives. Then about middle of the afternoon we’d start up no less than four ice cream freezers, which early on were hand cranked, but eventually became motorized electric. Vanilla, Chocolate, Peach, Strawberry, and sometimes combinations of other fruits and berries.

With that nostalgia as the backdrop, our 1st Annual Ballenger Family Weekend is going to now be the beginning of a “New Thing” to do every first weekend in August, something we can count on every year to come together to have fun in and around the water and share elements of our family’s history and future.

Made up now of Ballenger, Dray, Hall families, all with connection to, and in memoriam of, Joseph Eugene Ballenger, Edna Farrior Ballenger, and Ray H. Ballenger we can celebrate our family young and old, with an ongoing event we can all plan on having the same time every year. This will be the place to share news about the gathering event and stories and ideas. More thoughts to come…..