Our Family

Some of the Saturday gang

The family is the first essential cell of human society.
-- Pope John Paul XXIII, 1963

My mother's ancestors immigrated from Scandanavia to the United States. The U.S. government was giving away land in those days to people who would clear and settle it. The house my mother was born in was built in the 1800's and sits on 800 acres. Her brother Nick lives in that same house now with his wife Ann.

My brother Arnold, my mom, and her brother Nick

You don’t choose your family.
They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
-- Desmond Tutu, 1986

Every other year they hold a family reunion. A large part of her side of the family still lives in the Pacific Northwest, we are the heathen southern Californians, but I think they love us anyway.

Robin, Hayley, Sean, and Steven

One’s family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way:
One of these days I’ll be over in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me.
And the only people who’ll be with me will be my family.
-- Robert C. Byrd, U.S. senator

I look at all that beautiful land and the country that surrounds it, and I wonder sometimes how she could bear to leave it, but I think she was looking for more opportunities than were available to her in that small farming community.

Steven and Sean playing on the beach

We enjoyed our final day at the beach. Monday we go to Verboort, outside of Portland, to visit our cousins for two nights.

- Kathleen