Friend Spotlight: My BILs and SILs - Background

This spotlight is a group spotlight! So, I'm going to mini-spotlight more links to the right . . .

(Bear with me--this blog also serves as journaling and family history).

Mark is the oldest of 6 very smart, classy, good-looking boys, 5 of whom are married (I won't embarrass Michael by saying "That's right, Ladies! There's one more who hasn't yet been snagged!" Oops, I just did).

We don't all see one another very much since 2 live in CA, 2 live in UT, we live in PA, and 1 is about to live in FL, and since we've all been in school--college and medical/law/graduate school/getting married and having babies/living off of student loans/dealing with debilitating depression (that's me)/quitting residency and being unemployed (that's us)/starting our own business. You get the idea. :P

Someday (in the next couple of years, we think), we're all getting together for a big, fun reunion together. And hopefully, as we all get more settled (and richer? Stupid gas prices . . . ), we can visit one another more. We're excited both for when we get a chance to visit them again and for when, if they'd like and when they are able, they can come here and see where we live and enjoy all the area has to offer. If we were to win the lottery, those are some of the items on our list.

We've lived here for over 5 years. On our move out here, we purposely took the northern route so we could visit more family and friends so we got to visit my brother as well as 3 of Mark's brothers (one of whom, Michael, was on his mission in Ohio). Doug and Jenny were away when we went through UT:

Visiting Uncle Greg

And Aunt "Jekida" - K got to help at the store!

Visiting Dave and Emily

Visiting Uncle Michael

We haven't seen any of Mark's brothers since then (or since before then). The youngest, Scott, got married this past December. We tried to figure out a way to be there, but it didn't work out for a lot of reasons and instead of being at their wedding, we were by my Dad's side as he died. They've been so great and understanding about it. Even though we haven't yet met our new sister-in-law, we're excited to do so soon when they join us in this time zone!

As for my side of the family, I have 1 much older brother (13 years older--I was a surprise) and he lives in AZ (and UT before that). Until getting together (for less than 1 day) by my Dad's bedside and then again for my Dad's funeral, we hadn't seen my brother since he visited us when we moved here. We talk fairly frequently on the phone and via email. He doesn't have a blog and I think he may have forgotten about ours. I don't mind. He tends to tease me mercilessly.

Am I post-partum or what? Looks like I haven't seen the light of day in months (I kind of hadn't, even in Sunny Arizona). Me and my brother Bob with my Mom and Dad.

My Brother (Uncle Bob) and his 5 girls (they all came to visit the summer we moved here).

So, we don't see our siblings much. We all see our parents more often--both my parents and Mark's parents visit us about once every 1-2 years. So, yeah, it's pretty long distance to say the least.

Since keeping in touch hasn't been among everyone's strongest points, several years ago, as a gift, we set up a private family blog for Mark's side of the family. Everyone was fairly new to blogging. The first 9 posts went commentless. Slowly, everyone started signing up and getting the hang of it, posting and putting up pictures. It has been SO nice to be in better touch through blogging. We've all really enjoyed it and we've all caught the blogging bug! I can't say enough how much blogs have helped us know more about what's going in with each other and keep in touch and communicate and share and enjoy--we love it!

So, pretty soon, we all started setting up our individual family blogs as well. Now, we all keep tabs on each other, reading, commenting, joking around. It's really fun and takes a little bit of the sting out of the distance.

Good grief, I can talk! This is still background. Stop talking and get to the spotlight! Okay. (Yes, I even talk to myself. Shocker.) This is ridiculous, I'm going to do this in installments . . .