Big Families

This is my family. Plus two more grandkids from the time this was taken a year and a half ago. It's no small feat keeping track of all these people and their comings and goings. You would think with just the shear number of small children we've reproduced that we wouldn't have time to do anything but keep track of all those kids. Maybe it's because we're seven girls (plus one boy) that we somehow manage to not only keep tabs on one another, but we also manage to butt into one another's lives whether we want them there or not. Louisa May Alcott wrote in her novel Little Women "there's no one I love more than my sisters" I agree, there's a bond between sisters that if you have sisters you know exactly what I'm talking about, and if you don't have sisters you never really will understand. I love them, I would open my home to them, fly around the country for them, I want to fly around the world for them, I would laugh with them, or cry with them, I'm fiercely loyal to them, but sometimes I think we assume we know what's best for each other without knowing all the changes we've made as grown up women. I think we get stuck in the birth order rut, or in old rivals long ago forgotten by that other sister. We assume that we've grown up and taken on our own small part of this world while all the rest are still where we left them, new moms overwhelmed by small baby challenges, new wives who struggle with meshing two lives together, new graduates who have faced no great challenges in life, and therefor offer no great advice, or just little pimple faced teenagers who's drama is no match for our lives. It's a rare blessing to be able to see your sisters as they are in present state, to see them as friends, equal to the task that we've all taken on as different as they may be.

So, here's to you sisters, all of you all over the world, I think you're doing great at whatever role you have at the moment. Thanks for letting me in, not only as a sister, but as a friend.