Family Ties :: Part Two

Onto Day Two of our family-filled weekend in the Land of 10,000 Lakes... From the hotel in Minneapolis we trekked just an hour north to my cousin Carolyn's house outside North Branch.

This was a gathering of any relatives of my Grandpa Hildor and Grandma Minnie Hedberg. We had a great turnout. I'd say over 60 people based on all the group photos taken later. It was nice to see all my aunts and uncles and many, many cousins.

We tried to get general family group shots from each of the "original" Hedberg children.

First, the originals....

At our last reunion 5 years ago, Dad was the oldest surviving member. Now that he is gone, we are down to 4 Hedberg siblings, my Aunt Gwen (the oldest) and from left, Uncle Hartley, Uncle Charlie and Uncle Ray. I had tears in my eyes missing Dad, that's for sure.

And her are some of the spouses added in. In front is Mom, Aunt Gwen and Uncle Alan, who was married to Dad's sister Betty. Aunt Betty and Uncle Alan were my godparents. Betty died when Carter was 1. In back is Aunt Sally with Uncle Charlie, Aunt Barb with Uncle Ray, and Uncle Hartley with Aunt Alice.

Since Aunt Gwen didn't have children, all of the "first cousins" posed with her as her kids. In back is David, Scott, Ron, Karen, Pam, Dan and Raylene. In middle is Susan, Sheary, Romey, Stephanie, Carolyn, Diane, Kris, Dede, Rayna and Terianne. In front is me, Aunt Gwen, Rachel, Renell and Kim. I think that's everyone.

My Aunt Audrey was Dad's oldest sister. These are her children: Susan, David and Sheary.

Dad's sister Betty as the next oldest. This is Uncle Alan and the gang, our hosts for the day!

My dad's brother Dudley was next in line. My Aunt Marlene is still living but in a nursing car facility. These are the kids who were in attendance: daughters Terianne and Deedra and Dede's kids Travis and Amanda.

Then comes LeRoy's clan. Mom and her 8 R's and then some! Not everyone was there but somewhere in there you'll see Rayna and Paul, Romey and Rick, Renell and Tom and Caryn and Anthony, Ron, Rachel and Jeff, my troop, Raylene and Steve and Ashley. RoAnn and Ken came later so we did have all 8 R's there through the course of the afternoon.

Here are Uncle Hartley and Aunt Alice and two of their kids, Scott and Kim.

And then we have Uncle Ray and Aunt Barb (my favorite blog reader!) and their kids: Stephanie, Kris and Dan. Of our first generation of cousins, Stephanie is one of two younger than Raylene and me. The other, Jeremy (Dudley's youngest) wasn't there.

I did not get pictures of the St. Louis contingent, Uncle Charlie, Sally and the girls. I guess they had their picture inside. Will have to get that form someone.

After formal pictures, of course there were a few more...

 Mom and her babies!

My crazy "Sisters Over Sixty" contingent!

And a nice three-generation photo with Mom / Grandma.

It was really a lovely day. And we hopefully had enough people bring old photos that we can build up our family tree archive a bit. So glad I have a few cousins helping out with that now. There is still a mystery or two that my co-genealogist cousin Dede and I have to figure out! We can't turn everything over. We deserve to discover the answer. Ha!

Now that the family event weekend of the summer is over again, I'm not sure when I'll see people again. For sure my sisters for sister weekend in late October and then many more at the Cookie Bake. But that all just seems so far away.

I guess we'll just the weekend we had. And it was good!