My Cousins, Daphenie & Gracie

This is my cousin, Daphenie. We have a play date on May 19th at her house in San Clemente. Her mom is my mom's cousin, Diana. My mom has lots of family besides me and her pups, Melissa and Colleen and their kids. She has her cousin, Diana, that she grew up with. Their fathers were brothers: My grandpapa, George and his brother, Michael.

So here's how it goes, best as I can tell. George and Ruth had Michele, Michael, Nicholas and Gregory. Michael and Jean had Diana.

Then Michele had Melissa and Colleen and Diana had Beth, Carolyn and Jennifer.

Then Melissa had Randy, Cade and Carter, and Colleen had Clancy and Cailin. Beth had Mila and Michael, Carolyn had Ali, and Jennifer had Daniela and Nicholas.

Then Mila had Gracie Anastasia. That makes FIVE whole generations of my GrandPapa's family on this earth.


Mila and Gracie, my cousins and my Grandpa's Great Grand Niece and Great GREAT Grand Niece, which would also be his brother Michael's Great Grand and Great Great Granddaughters. Whew. Wear's me out just thinking about it. Personally, I just can't WAIT to meet Mila and Gracie. Did you know that Mila (short for Ludmila) was my GrandPapa's mother's name?

Now all this doesn't include pups, or kids from any of my mom's brothers. That would REALLY add a whole lot of kids. We can get into all that later. Right now, what counts is that I HAVE another cousin named Daphenie and we are going to PLAY in MAY!!!

I will be very gentle with her because she's just a baby who got adopted in Montana last Christmas. She weighs maybe 30 pounds now. I can handle that. I was a teacher at puppy school and I know how to manage kids, no matter how big they are.

I'm SOOOOO excited.

Love,

Mary-Margaret

PS - After I dictated this I started counting...and I ran out of fingerettes and toelets. Almost thirty human blood relatives all because of Ludmila Tschebotarioff and Michael John Safonov getting married back in Russia during the Revolution and having two baby boys, one in Russia before they left and one in Basra, Iraq on their way to China. WOW.