30-Week Blog Challenge Week 17: Family Photo

I'm back with the Monday blog challenge! The lady in charge is Marie at Mom Gets Real. The questions are right here:

QUESTIONS

And Week 17's prompt is . . .

A PHOTO OF YOUR FAMILY!

Ah, how funny that this is the topic this week, because I am about to go see my family in California! (The members of it that I get to see least often, that is.) I will be flying with my mom out to see my sister and brother-in-law and new nephew! :)

My parents are divorced, so there aren't really any recent pictures of all of us together. The most recent must have been my sister Patricia's wedding in 2009:

Pictured are Matt, Heather, Daddy, me, sister Patricia, brother-in-law Yusuke, sister Lindsay, Mommy, and Yusuke's parents. Matt and Heather got to be in "family" pictures because my mom used to joke that she had 3.5 kids and that Heather was her "point-five" daughter. (Heather lived with my family for many years--she was a high school friend of mine that my mom took in.) Matt was her husband. He also lived with my mom for a while.

An older but better picture of just the immediate family, from 2004:

Patricia, Mommy, Lindsay, me, Daddy

Now some extended family pictures:

Sister Lindsay, me, paternal grandmother, paternal grandfather, Daddy, sister Patricia

Sister Lindsay with Mike, to whom she recently got engaged, so soon he will be family officially!

Me with my daddy's sister, Elisa!

Annnnnnd my mom's side. See, my mom's one of eight children. In the center there are my maternal grandparents, who are no longer with us. My aunts and uncles are their children, Kenny, Pattie, Keith, Denise, Jane, Greg, and Diane. Kenny is no longer with us but his partner Jake was considered family. Pattie's married to Jim, Keith's married to Laura, Denise is married to Maury, Jane is married to Dean, Greg is married to Pam, Diane is married to Michael.

Most of my mom's siblings had kids, too, so there are a bunch of cousins in that picture. I have family I haven't met, and I'm not even entirely sure I know all their names, but to the best of my knowledge I can rattle off who they belong to. I believe my Aunt Pattie's children are named Alexandra, Jimmy, Nicholas, and Alena; my Aunt Denise's children are Chris, Erin, and Cheryl (plus they adopted Andrea and John); my Aunt Jane's kids are Alyssa and Michael; and my Uncle Greg's kids are Lizzie, Sarah Jane, Tommy, and Kenny (named after my deceased eldest uncle).

And my honorary family:

BFFs since high school, Meghan and I have been considering ourselves sisters for a long time, and her kids Katelyn and Benjamin call me auntie.

I can't put pictures of my newest family member, Ash, until/unless my sister says it's cool to share photos of the cutie-patootie baaaaaaby, but yeah, let's not forget about him!

And that's it. Hooray family!