Mi Familia – Part Tres

Sorry I have been absent for so long – my full time job is extremely busy right now getting ready for our conference in a month in Toronto. I have been working pretty much non-stop even once I get home. I am neglecting family, friends and bloggers alike! I cannot wait for this conference to be over!!

I have decided to take a small break from the work – blech – and post Part Tres. I know y’all have been anxiously waiting to see who comes next in my ridiculously large family.

Part Tres starts with my youngest, oldest sister, Sherri Bob. I am referring to her as Sherri Bob because she moved to Wisconsin long ago and one of her friends called everyone their name and then added Bob because they live in farm country. I thought it was funny. She no longer lives in Wisconsin and I hardly ever call her Sherri Bob to her face but I have decided to here. Run with it.

Sherri Bob has her own blog, too. She has only posted one thing, but in time I believe that she will have some interesting things to say. Get ready to add her to your blog roll, people! She is definitely a character.

She is the one with her mouth open. And that is my oldest sister, Donna, if you remember back in Part Uno and me in the middle. Sisters….sisters….

Here is the story I love about Sherri Bob:

Back before time began – for me, at least – Donna, Wayne (Part Dos) and Sherri Bob were in the backseat while my mama was driving down the road. The kids were probably in the 9-12 or so age range. Kids are kids, right? So she pulled on the handle of the door and out she rolled so silently and effortlessly from the car. (This was before seat belt laws and car seats were enforced and kids could just jump around in the car willy nilly.) Un-hurt, Little Sherri Bob sprang up from the dirt and ran after the car as my mama kept driving. Little Donna and Wayne – the angels – just waved and grinned from the back window. Tootle-loo, sister, tootle-loo. Little Sherri Bob, bless her heart, ran as fast as she could after the car so that mama wouldn’t leave her stranded and abandoned. Mama didn’t know why cars were honking; their drivers waving and pointing so she nodded and waved back at them. Friendly people in these here parts, she thought, but why are they shaking their fists? Curious. Then seeing Little Sherri Bob in the side mirror, running behind, my mama pulled over and let her back in, to her brother and sister’s great dismay.

That is the story I like to tell and I make it funnier and more exaggerated every time, of course. But what really happened is that my mama knew she fell out and didn’t want to run her over so drove some distance away from the drop-out point to stop. Sherri Bob was so fast and hopped right up and tore off after her, making it seem to passers-by that my mama didn’t realize she had lost a passenger. Ahhhh…memories!

Sherri Bob is married to Dale:

And has two daughters. Aimee Bob:

Here she is after we had just pierced our noses. (She is a lot more like a sister to me than a niece.) My story with Aimee is that I dropped her when she was a baby. She won’t let me forget it. Sherri Bob was very angry with me back then for doing so. My only defense is that she was all bundled up in one of those slippery sleeper coats for winter and she was doing that arching her back thing that babies do. Well, she arched right out of my arms with her little slippery self and did a face plant on the carpet. So if she’s a little messed up in the head, it is my fault. I apologize, Aimee. Sincerely. Please forgive me. That was a lot of guilt for an eight year old to deal with. I still have nightmares. Sherri Bob was scary to me at that age. She is 5’7″ but to a little kid, she was very tall – seven feet, at least. And she had this eyebrow raise look she would give you if she wasn’t happy with you. Scary. Am I right, Aimee?

And Hannah Bob:

Hannah is 10 and is currently being home-schooled. Hannah Bob is holding a child of Aimee Bob’s. His name is Leland, but we will get to him, in good time, my friends.

Aimee is married to Keolakapono. That’s right, it’s a long, funny name. He is Hawaiian. We call him Keola.

The little guy with him is Anthony, their son. He is a month older than Big A and just entered Kindergarten, too. Then there is Abbey:

She is two weeks older than Little A – so almost 3! Then comes the littlest love bug you ever could meet. I just wanna squeeze the stuffin out of him. His name is Leland and he is soooo cute:

His little black t-shirt says, “Lock up your daughters.” Tis true!! Of course, I think they are all adorable! But Leland is just too cuddly. All of the above live in Phoenix, AZ and that is way too far away from here! But a lovely place to visit to escape from the freezing cold of Chicago! Keola and Aimee have been there for three or four years and Sherri Bob, Dale and Hannah have recently joined them after leaving the farmstead in Wisconsin. They missed their little family too much!

Well, that does it for Part Tres. I think that is everyone. I have no living grandparents and neither does Hubby. Hubby just has his poor little mama who lives in NH:

Not really enough for Part Cuatro. Poor Hubby. I made him meet everyone the first time he met me. Although back then there wasn’t this many of us, but there were the older kids at least. And he married me anyways. Gotta love that!

I hope you enjoyed mi familia! I sure do on a daily basis. I hear Donna is going to start a blog so she can dish all the stories about yours truly, DM. Sherri might as well in her blog. So far my mama hasn’t said anything too embarrassing but we’ll see after the Sherri Bob story what kind of trouble I’ll be in!

Until next time, dear bloggers. Thanks for reading!

Mi Familia – Part Dos!

Part two begins with my brother, Wayne. The second oldest – he was 15 when I was born – and my mother’s living nightmare. He was accident prone and on more than one occasion, the police had shown up at her door.

The memory about my brother that I have (could be another planted memory) is when I burst in on him in the bathroom when I was little and came out screaming in horror, “Wayne’s got a tail, Wayne’s got a tail!”

Like I said, Wayne was accident prone. He was in the ER quite often. My mom was on a first name basis with all the nurses. The worst was when he worked in a factory feeding metal into a big machine and it ate his thumb. My sister called it “de-gloving” his skin from his thumb. To keep the bone alive, they had to sew his hand to his groin area and he had to walk around with a poncho on. They had to put a nerve from his middle finger into his thumb so he could feel it. Now, I tease and say that when he is flipping someone off, he sticks up his thumb at them.

Then another time, he fell on a stick and it poked him in the cheek. It damaged some nerves in his face. The end result is that when he eats/chews, that side of his face sweats! The stories never end!

Wayne married young and had children young. I was four when Wayne’s oldest, Kevin was born. Then they had David and Rachel.

Here they are more recently with another one of my nieces, Aimee. (She comes in Part Tres.)

Kevin is a hottie bartender living the Cocktail life in Florida. He used to be a pirate (he is the one with the finger – runs in the family):

David is married to Nicole:

And Rachel is married and has two babies. I, unfortunately do not have a picture of the newest baby, Ty or her husband, Jody, but here is one of Rachel and her first, Arianna:

Then, Wayne divorced from his first wife and married Rita. They have FOUR kids together, three boys and a girl. All the boys initials are WWW like my brother. They are: Walynn (pronounced WAY-LYNN), Wyatt and Wayra (pronounced WAYDUH). His daughter is named Aylah (A-LA). Here they are. If you look close, you can see Wayne’s big thumb on the kid’s shoulder on the left:

So ends Part Dos! Stay tuned for Part Tres and the funniest story you have ever heard about my youngest, older sister, Sherri-Bob.

Mi Familia – Part Uno!

I have the biggest family in the world.

I exaggerate. I probably don’t have the biggest family in the world, but it is pretty big.

We’ll start off with my mama. Here we are – my mama and me.

She is the best mama I have ever had. Seriously. She had me when she was 40 – pretty uncommon for that age, 30+ years ago. She is a wonderful lady and has some pretty interesting things to say over at Chatting with G.G. She grew up as the oldest with 3 brothers. Yikes. Then went on to have a GI-NORMOUS family of her own. Let us begin.

First she had my eldest sister, Auntie D. Here we are – my sista and me.

You might remember reading about her in this post. It was pretty funny and I will never let her live it down. NEVER. She reads my blog, but never comments. I think she thinks that if she doesn’t comment then I will not think that she reads it. But, then again, maybe I do not want her to comment because then she’ll rat me out to our mama about something or another. My earliest memory of Auntie D is probably only a memory because it has been told/referred to/talked about many times. So I do not know if it is a memory or if it is a recollection of stated facts.

I was knee high to a grasshopper. How old that is, one can never be sure. But there I was. I wanted a piece of cheese – the kind that comes sliced up in their own wrappers. Now referred to as Kraft singles, but back then, it was just cheese. So I am rooting around in the fridge. If you were in the kitchen, you could only see my feet sticking out from beneath the door. I acquire my desired object and just when I am about to turn around and leave, a deep, scary voice yells, “Who’s in the REFRIGERATOR?!?!?!?!” I jumped a mile, slammed that door and scurried out of the kitchen with a pitter-patter of my little, itty-bitty feet. Because if I was knee high to a grasshopper – those would be some tiny feet. To this day I cannot eat that type of cheese.

So, you have no doubt guessed that the scary voice was my sister. She was probably around 19-20 or so since aforementioned, my mama had me when she was 40 and Auntie D was 16 when I was born. Yes, wonder no further. I was an accident.

Auntie D married Unka Bob when I was three or four. I was their flower girl. I did not do the greatest job at the flowering part. I was a shy child and did not like a lot of attention. So when I was standing all alone at the back of the humongous Catholic church where they got married, I was in tears. I had to walk down that long aisle all by myself. It wasn’t happening, people. There was no way. So when it was my turn, I tore down that thing like the demons of hell were on my tail. Flower petals, schmlower petals. Them things stayed in my little basket until I accidentally dumped them on the altar later.

Anyways, Unka Bob has been around in my life a LONG time. Here we are:

D and Bob were more like second parents growing up than sister and bro-in-law. My mama and me lived with them most of my life and my mama worked all the time and left me with Auntie D. I was like her oldest child. Then came this one:

That’s Chris. He was pretty cute. I don’t know what happened, but he was, long ago 😉 Now, he’s just crabby. lol

Then came Jon. I think Little A looks like him in this picture.

Also cute. They were like little brothers to me. We lived together in perfect harmony for quite some time. Now, my two A’s remind me of them.

That is not a real gorilla, y’all. Just so you know. Or a kangaroo.

And then…there was Auntie B.

She is a beautiful young woman now and she likes to watch my kids – yay for me!

Chris is now married to his cute little wifey, Sabrina.

I can’t find another one of them together so here is one of me, Sabrina and Auntie B.

Jon is engaged to Jen and they have a cute little one year old named Jess. In the pic, Jess is only 5 months old. Jen has five other kids: Nik, Kris, Mandy, Bri and Joe.

Now, they are one big happy family!

Auntie B is still flying solo, but she has a boyfriend named Co-wee. That is how Little A says his name.

And that, my bloggy friends, is part uno de mi familia! I have to split it up into parts or you will be here all week.

Oh, and did I mention that I was half Mexican? Ole!