Monday, July 21, 2008

We are Family...

I've been thinking a good bit about family the last week and what is family. With Ben and Anita and the kiddies moving to Oklahoma in about 2 weeks, it's really struck me that our family has always been together and now we're going to be half a country apart. However, I will not cry, I'll just miss them a bunch, but since Anita's got her nifty new blog, we can "see" what's going on.

This leads me to the meat of the blog today. What is family? A family is usually made up of mom, dad, brother, sister, grandparents, and all those folk. However, I've added people to my family and I cherish those relationships just as much or more than my "blood" family. People like Crystal (BFF, fellow ESAL and the first "adopted" kid), Heather (my sister of Jewish extraction), Steph (she actually is a cousin of sorts but more of a Western sister), Connie (crazy fun auntie) and a whole bunch of others that would take me days and days to name. Most times my "put together" family knows more about what is going on in my life than my other family members. Added to that are all of Kiersten's family members, who feel like offshoots of my own. Not to be left out of course are the families that have "married in", the Chesleys and Branhams that came with Mike and the Crews(es?) that came with Anita.

I wonder sometimes is it a Southern thing, to have the regular family tree, then a whole bunch of offshoots and twists and turns. I don't know. However, I know that I'm blessed to have ALL of my family, blood, adopted, married in and tacked on.

By the way, for all of you that are wondering, I'm doing fine driving Mike's car and we sold my van on Saturday. The whole driving thing is a topic for another day.

Happy week to all!

6 comments:

campbell said...

I could write a whole topic on this family thing too. But I just want to say because we have moved around alot that you find family whenever you go. Boyd and I have never lived by blood family except when we were first married. But we have been blessed to always find sweet friends that we consider family.

Alona said...

I love the family topic and I love my family. I was born into a huge family and have always been lucky to have some type of family near by but I too have sooo much extended and added on family whom I would never trade for anything. What do you have if you do not family?

House of Squitty said...

I for one am glad to be married in! I love confusing people by telling them how I'm related to the Hoverman's! Why are Ben and Anita moving?

Connie said...

crazy auntie???? Gee thanks!:) We find members of our "tribe" in all shapes, sizes, ages you name it. The whole family things gets really interesting when you have previous marriages involved.

scchesleys said...

Yes, crazy (as in funny and silly) auntie.

Tiffany, Ben got a job in Oklahoma City.

Anonymous said...

This is a topic I think about quite a lot too. One of the men I work with was telling me about a day when he was on a subway looking at all of the motley types of people, and the thought hit him that each and every one of them was part of a family...in the smack dab middle of a network of family AND friends who cared about him/her, who shared hugs, tears, and so forth. We began talking about how when you meet a person, all you see is that person, and you just can't always see the invisible ones who came before or who are off somewhere else.

Does that make sense? It was kind of rambling. I had been in the Camden ward about two or three weeks when one Sunday in RS, Willette looked at me from across the piano and mouthed the words, "I met your children." I could hardly wait to hear about the circumstance of their meeting afterwards. People in Camden just see me. They don't know about those wonderful children, grandchildren, parents (though deceased), siblings, husband, and so forth.

About the divorce and remarriage and twists and turns and branches, that's more than I can handle tonight.