Finally - Back to "Normal"

Well, good news. My life is finally back to what I would call normal. My idea of normal is likely no where near any other persons idea of normal, but whatever works right?

I just found out that one of my cousins got engaged recently. Evidently it's a hush-hush thing that only a few people know. Yeah right, in my family!? I guess his parents are gonna have to learn to like her now, an impending wedding has a tendency to do that. I'm happy for her, I just wonder if she isn't too young. I've been down this road myself - got married the first time way too young and it ended just as quickly as it began. I guess I try to shelter my family from that happening to them.

So, with that announcement, one of my other cousins (I'm the second of 13 granchildren, 7 girls and 6 boys. We range from 35(my sister) to 8(my youngest girl cousin) is wondering if she's going to have to "take out" the 8 year old to make sure she doesn't get beat to the alter by all the girl cousins. It's kind of funny when you think about it. Then again, I tell them all that they are following my lead. I was the first to get married (twice) and the first to have a baby. So far I do maintain the record for the number of marriages for the grandchildren, I got beat out for the number of kids a while back, one of my other girl cousins has three kids under the age of 5. Yikes! What was she thinking?

Anyway, that gets in to too much of the dysfunction of my family. It would take me an hour to go through all that crap just to make some sense out of things. Here's some basic genealogy to help:

My maternal grandmother had 6 girls, they are 54, 53, 52, 51, 46 and 42.
54 had 3 kids: Boy-29, Girl-26, Boy-23
53 (my mom) had 2 kids: Girl-35{had a girl-4}, Girl-34{had a girl-5}
52 had 1 kid: Boy-29
51 had 2 kids: Boy-24, Girl-22
46 had 2 kids: Girl-26{had a girl-4, girl-2, boy-3months}, Boy-19
42 had 3 kids: Boy-12, Boy-10, Girl-8

Now, add in the spouses and boy/girlfriends and imagine what family gatherings are like.