Thursday, January 1, 2009

On Family Gatherings

Good morning and happy new year!

My friend Mary (yup, that's her link over there on the side bar) wrote on her blog about her extended family (the Moore's) gathering at Christmas time. It's a delightful education for those of you who don't know about large families. When we lived in Nebraska, we had the privilege of knowing Jack (now in his heavenly home) and Dorothy Moore, so seeing that family photo was special.

It's kind of like the extended family on my side, the Andersons. We are a crazy group of people, pretty much hell-bent on getting to Grandma's house at Christmas, no-matter-what. This year, my brother Dennis and his tractor, accompanied by Dennis's son Eric, met each carload of crazyAndersons at the highway, to plow a trail in through the snow drifts. When we all left on Sunday night, he had to do the whole procedure in reverse. (Dennis, you are an amazing brother) Bear in mind, a quarter mile of this trail was actually in a corn field. We'll call it a field road. One of those kind normally reserved for farm equipment. But a good time was had by all.

My parents have nineteen granchildren, Seven are married. Four are not old enough to be married. (!) That leaves eight out there in 'available land' and they like to keep the aunts hopeful and guessing! So you never know who's going to show up at the door.

One memorable year at Grandma and Grandpa's house, which,when the youngest grandchild, Aaron, was about six, reigns in the history book as the true record of how it goes. First, you need to know about Aaron. Actually, you need to know Aaron. If you googled 'delightful humans' you'd probably find him in the number one spot. It only takes about a five minute chat with him and all of a sudden you're just feeling better about everything in general. Anyway, back to the year Aaron was six-ish or so. The Anderson house was packed to the seams with people. The doorbell rang. Aaron, (still intrigued with door bells) ran to answer. He opens the door with "Hi, I'm Taylor, welcome to our family!" We still aren't sure why he decided to be Taylor at that moment, but we all agree the message was true: add one more person, and you still never have too many.

And because our Christmas cards are still in the box, with only 4 or 5 of them addressed, Merry Christmas!

Later, Karen

1 comment:

Mary Connealy said...

Only 19 grandchildren? You Andersons are not even TRYING.

And yes, we've got more and more of the grandchildren moving into the 'old enough to be married' category. Eight maybe ... out of high school. Some of them a LONG way out.

So, I suppose we'll just keep racking up the weddings for a long time to come.

Maybe we should race the Andersons.