R is for Relatives

It is my favorite time of the week – AlphabeThursdays!! Hop on over to Mrs. Matlocks and check out all the amazing R links.  Please play nice and visit the other kids, oh and if you want to be popular be sure to comment a lot.

I know you thought I was going to post on reconomics or recycling or maybe even rice pudding. But I am not. I am going to talk about my relatives.

I am willing to bet you all $.50 that if you added all the relatives of all the people who read this blog post together you wouldn’t have as many as I do. I am confident in that.

How do I know? Well I have over 800 relatives – not going any further away than my cousins, cousins kids and cousins grandkids.

Here is how it works:

My grandparents Laurence and Mary Tippmann had 16 children.

(aren’t they adorable? this was in the early 30’s)

                                 

(my dad is the good looking one – at least I think so!)

These 16 children had 136 children.

These 136 children have had over 500 children. Yep, true story. Talk about your practicing Catholics. And this generation is no where near done. I am #25 out of 136 and I still have a couple years of fertility in me.

These 500 children have begun having babies – about 50 or so I would guess.

That my friends is just my dad’s side. No second cousins and  no inlaws (that adds 100+ to the number).

My Mom came from a family of 9. They had 50 kids and so on and so forth totalling about 250.

So, that is why I am certain I have more relatives than you.

Yes, Christmas is fun.

Yes family reunions are wild.

No, I don’t know everyone’s name.

And weddings, weddings are HUMONGOUS!

I am so grateful for my large family. I have to admit growing up sometimes it was annoying having a relative everywhere I went. Made it hard to sneak around and be bad.
A problem the kids are having now is dating. We always tell them to find out who their grandpa is (or great-grandpa) to be sure they aren’t kissing their cousin! ewwww!

 
I know this is hard to see – it is a picture of a picture but it was taken in 2000. There are over 500 people in the picture. This was our last family reunion.

Don’t forget the place to be is Jenny Matlock’s AlphabeThursday!