What would we do baby, without us? Sha la la la

Ah yes, family. My grandpa's wake was this evening, followed by dinner at his/our house. I apparently timed my arrival at the wake just right - the funeral director was just finishing the family service. Literally, I walked in as he stopped talking. So everyone in my family (except my dad, thank God) was actually crying when I came in. But they were all in the process of stopping. Of course, I haven't escaped the cryfest that will be tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure I can handle it.

One silver lining for this whole experience is the default family reunion that results. My aunts and uncles have pretty diverse personalities, and I don't exactly click with every one of them - though they're all good people. But for all that, I have an amazingly cool group of cousins. We don't see each other very often, especially all together. My sisters and I grew up in the family flagship hometown, and we saw a whole lot of my cousin Chelle (a few of you may know her from such tales as "Chelle and the Bull") since she grew up about 20 minutes away. But my cousins Tracy and John live in California, and my cousins Josh and Jordan have military parents and grew up in Amsterdam, West Germany, and Rekjavik before settling in Wyoming.

When we were younger, there were three sort of cousin strata. John, Tracy, and my sisters were all around the same age. Chelle and I were around the same age. And Josh and Jordan were the youngest. It's kind of odd (and cool) getting together now, because we've all somehow gelled into the same "adult" age group. Ain't time a crazy thing? We are now 40, 36, 34, 34, 25, 23, 20, and 18. (It's kind of funny that Chelle and I always thought of Josh and Jordan as so much younger than we were.) Anyway, we all sat around talking tonight. If you know me you won't be too surprised by this, but we laughed. A lot. Grandpa would have approved.