I am thankful that I grew up knowing all of my cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. Yesterday was our first Thanksgiving spent with extended family in many, many years. (Not that we haven’t SEEN them on Thanksgiving – we just usually do our own thing for the “main course”.) My mom has four sisters and one brother, and each of them have at least two kids, which makes for a lot of people. In all the years that I have been alive, we haven’t always gotten along with everybody. In fact, most of the time there are people who aren’t speaking to others. Family Things are very different than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But I had the unique and precious experience of growing up around all of my mom and dad’s families. Spending holidays with them, for better or worse, and really knowing them like so many people don’t know their relatives.