Cousin search

Between losing my grandpa this week and being alone so far from everyone I know, I recently became very nostalgic about my extended family. I have eleven blood-related first cousins that I knew as a kid. I have another another seven that I never really knew. I'm sure if I add in step relations and the random illegitimate unknown it would push the list over twenty. TWENTY! First-cousins, even. This is just my immediate generation in the tree. Of those, I've only seen three of them in the past year, and only about five in the last few years. In fact, I haven't seen (or otherwise interacted with) a majority of them in well over a decade.

As important as my own little family is to me, it's hard for me to comprehend that I've grown so far apart from my extended family over the years. Since I've been married it's always seemed like it's my wife who's had the big family, but in all actuality mine dwarfs hers. We've just never been around much of mine. Many of them are in East Arkansas, but others are spread all over the states, as far as I know.

My sentiments prompted me to do a little searching, and lo and behold I found a good number of those long lost relatives on MySpace. Really, it was a friend invite I received from a cousin of mine from my dad's side, Martin, that got me really searching. I came up with two connections each on my mom's and my dad's side. I'm excited to make contact with them again! It's nice that the Internet is available to reunite us over such long distances and time. I'm also stoked that I can get more people involved in our Geni family tree project.

Here's to family!