New Relatives

Matt has a diverse and happily complicated family. He has parents who have each remarried and so has 3 siblings in California and 2 siblings in Minnesota. That means he has 2 sets of grandparents on his dad's side and 2 sets of grandparents on his mom's side. It gets even more diverse because Matt's mom's mother passed away when she was young, and so she grew up with a stepmom. That means that there's even more family from her biological mother's side. [Did I just totally confuse you? I know, I pretty much needed him to draw me a map once. It's taken me almost 10 years of dating/marriage to get it all straight. It's all a big web of family love!]

Matt met his great-grandma once when he was young, but hadn't seen her in recent years with being in the Marine Corps. I have sent her a Christmas letter every year for the past few years and get one in return, so I have almost felt like I know her, without ever having met her for real.

Several weeks ago over spring break, Matt and I went with his mom, brother and sister up to see great-grandma Rose. She is this little spunky thing, less than 5 feet tall with a great smile. We took her out to lunch which she insisted she pay for, and showed us around her rural Minnesotan town. Then, back at her apartment, I [of course] suggested we take a few photos before we said goodbye.