Less than one percent Cherokee

Great night tonight with the in-laws. Pam's cousins Mark Larson and his wife Mary, and Reed Larson and his wife Sharon, were in town and we all had dinner together. Mark, Reed and Jeanie are the children of Miriam, Grammy's sister, and Mary Alice is the daughter of Joan, Grammy's other sister. Grammy was the youngest of the three.

I'm writing this, kids, because neither you nor I will remember how this all fits together, and one of you is going to have to take on the mantle of family historian for Mom's family. Mark did a basement slideshow that I thought was going to be really tough for the kids to get through, but it turns out that Berit was pretty into it. Maybe she'll be the historian.

At dinner, all of the kids talked about their jobs. Griffin regaled everyone with stories from the Lucky Pie kitchen, Row talked about the trail (which Mark related to since he has volunteered on the Superior Hiking Trail) and Berit talked about working with adults with disabilities. The kids got along great with everyone. Reed and Sharon told us that Renner, their son, and his wife are about four years married now and she is pregnant and due in August. They live in Chicago were Renner does something in communications. For the Sierra Club. Evidently, Mark and Mary's daughter (Bridget?) also lives in Chicago and they pass each other occasionally en route to work.

Kip showed us the results of his AncestyDNA test, indicating, as we knew, that he was 90% Scandinavian and then some other stuff, including 3% Finnish and less than 1% Native American. How less than a percent Native American got in there is a freaking mystery to me, given the fact that his people all immigrated to North America in 1850.

As fun as the evening was, when the slideshow was over, Griffin, making it obvious that he was taking an urgent phone call, came back with a story that he had been in a game on his computer when we rushed him out of the house, and he had left Bellatrix locked in his room. He knew this because Evan, his friend with whom he had been gaming, could hear her meowing via Discord, the VOIIP software they use to speak with each other. It's an incredible thing when your buddy can call to tell you the cat is locked in your bedroom and you'd better leave the grandparents' house at once to rush home and let her out.

High Fructose / Astrology

Last night at dinner, Rowan said she felt like she hadn't seen us all together in months. This felt like a bit of an exaggeration, but it was enough of a heartfelt statement to give me pause, make me think that I at least needed to pull them in for dinner together a couple of nights each week. Griffin hung out with us long enough for everyone to say their rose and thorn; after that, Rowan regaled Berit and I with one of her favorite topics - astrology, and how it applies to members of our family. She knows each of our sun, moon and ascendant signs, and she is fairly conversant on what they mean for each of us. When she's not, she quickly accesses that information in the notes on her phone. A lot of the personality traits were spot-on - Berit's Leo, Rowan's Capricorn, my Scorpio - but some, like what the description of Virgo for both Pam's sun sign and my rising sign - were way off, it seemed. Still, I enjoy hearing about it, and I really enjoy how into it Rowan is.

Tonight, Bennett was here, and we all hung out for dinner again - looking at Bennett's High Fructose art magazine volume, singing Billy Joel, answering Griffin's trivia questions and eating food. Rowan scared the crap out of Griffin, leaping up from the backseat of the car when she and Berit went to pick him up from Cabaret rehearsal.