Wedding This Weekend

Today's my Mom & Dad's anniversary...but I won't get to spend any time with my dad.

We have a wedding to go to on Jenny's side of the family. Her mother's family is really close - seems like most of the Dani's and St. Julianna's migrated to a little town in Upper Michigan called Hermansville - north of Escanaba.

Peg (Jenny's mom) had a brother and a sister...and their families lived up in Escanaba. When Jenny was young, they'd take a couple two or three trips up north in the summers, and Peg's sister's and brother's family came down to Peg's house for the Thanksgiving holiday.

While up north, Jenny spent time with her extended family. Let's see...Jenny's nona (Italian for grandmother) had 7 siblings...and her nunu (sp? Italian for grandfather) had seven or eight siblings. Much of the family lived up there, so it was like a huge family reunion whenever the family would go up there. Huge family.

Jenny's sister Darcy moved up there when she turned eighteen. Some sort of mother-daughter thing. After Darcy was married for a few years she moved to Appleton, Wisconsin...near Green Bay.

So in the 13 years that we've been married, we've gone up there at least once a year. Most times we'd go sepatately from Peg & Ed - they'd stay up there for 2-3 weeks. Many times Darcy would come up to Escanaba, and some of the time we'd take an extra few days to go visit Darcy in Appleton.

Probably one of the nicest times was when we took a spur of the moment trip at Darcy's 40th birthday. Peg and Ed were going to be there, but nothing special was planned. I think we flew into Milwaukee and drove up from there on a mid-week day. We stopped in to see Darcy at her job at Fox Rivers Bank...and she was really excited to see us. She was in a bit of a bad mood, things weren't going so great at work...she'd been looking down when we walked in...and she started saying "You...." without looking up...when she looked up she said "...You're my sister!!" It was a really nice visit. oh...i can't believe she's gone.


So, this weekend is a wedding...let's see...it's Jenny's 2nd cousin, Luke. He's probably 12 years younger than Jenny...so she doesn't know Luke and his sister Danelle very well.

But this weekend is going to be hard on Jenny. It's the first family get-together in a three years that isn't a funeral. But for something like this we would most likely have driven with Peg & Ed...and we'd have really looked forward to seeing Darcy. In fact, Jenny mentioned that for about half a second she was thinking about seeing Darcy this weekend.

*sigh*.