My Future Husband Had Better Have A Big Family

So I went to Minnesota this year for Thanksgiving - it's where my Dad is from and where most of his side of the family still lives.  Since my Mom got to keep her job (YAY!), we decided we could take a mini-vacation.  At first, I was excited - I didn't think I was going to get to see my family for Thanksgiving, so I was happy that they had invited me to go with them.  But that lasted for about a split second. 


Then I had this thought.  It went something like this - We never travel for Thanksgiving.  We always stay home.  We always have people over.  I don't like traveling around the holidays, it's too busy and chaotic.  I'd rather just stay home.  Why did we have to go to Minnesota, why couldn't we have just stayed home?  That sort of put a damper on my Thanksgiving.  I wasn't that excited about it.  :/

But then I went.  And I sat in my grandparent's basement with 20 other people around and I suddenly had this flood of memories - memories that I'd somehow forgotten, but suddenly remembered. Memories of traveling to my grandparents house for Christmas.  Good memories.  Really good memories.  I almost cried - how had I forgotten?  How could I have forgotten making cake with my grandmother, hanging some awkward glittery putty-like substance on the window in the shape of snowmen and stars and snowflakes (there's a good chance my grandfather invented this putty-stuff), Opening presents, playing in the snow with my little cousins, remembering my uncle bring home his new wife and me meeting her for the first time - the wife who, years later, stands in the basement pregnant?

My dad's family is sort of odd - everybody has their quirks, for sure.  Almost everybody is introverted, but somehow you put us all together and we are LOUD!  Kids run around everywhere, adults talk and cook, clean up messes and laugh.  We have our issues, sure, but I'm so blessed.  It's a crazy family, but good crazy.  Not crazy as in grandma won't talk to son 4 because he married a girl she doesn't like and cousin 12 picks on cousin 4 and uncle 2 isn't ever around because he's in and out of jail and nobody's spoken to him in twelve years.  Not that crazy.  Crazy as in it's almost an entire family of engineers, and if they're not engineers, they're damn smart.  Crazy as in everybody has strong personalities, and we're a stubborn family who is always going going going, crazy as in we eat a ton of food, and we're perfectionists, and babies are a treasure and always get all the attention.  Crazy as in we do things like set up dominos (not play dominos, no, we set them up to go tumbling down like one of those fun videos) even though we're not very good and it takes like 5 tries to get one good run in, and then somebody has forgotten to push the record button on the camera and suddenly we have to do it all over again.  Crazy as in we play board games instead of watching the tv and then get competitive but in a good way and stay up til midnight playing games.  Crazy as in there's just people, everywhere, all the time, and everybody sits on top of everybody else and talks to everybody and it takes 30 minutes to get one good family picture, because there are 4 amateur photographers who are all trying to get their best portraits ever.  Crazy as in all the cousins grew up watching the River Dance VHS, to the point where the tape got so worn out that it doesn't work anymore.  Crazy as in in the middle of a get together my uncle will suddenly jump up and run downstairs and come back a minute later with his entire library of old LP's and his turntable and we spend an hour going through them, and singing along to things like Elvis and John Denver and U2 and Neil Diamond and even the kids know some of the songs.  Just crazy.

And somehow this year I finally got it - my family.  I get why everybody says they're thankful for their family.  Because they're who you really need.  They're the ones. For the first time ever, I got it.  And I can't even begin to express how much I love my family.  And, how much I love having a big family. 

So, Mr. Right.... I hope you have a lot of siblings.  Because otherwise we might have an issue....

(If not, Lauren and James, you're going to have to make up the difference.  That means like at least 5 kids each.)