Family

Karen, Lowell, and Margaret

Our road trip is finally underway, and our first stop was Eastern Washington to visit family.  My dad's family is spread out across the country, so visiting them will be an on-going thing throughout our trip, but there are quite a few folks in Washington so we tried to see a decent percentage of them on our first pass through.  Hopefully we will have a chance to visit more as we come back this way.

Madeline and Charlie

Cousin Karen is located in Walla Walla (near the prison, but not in it, yet) which seemed pretty central to others in the area so we planned to camp there and make short hops to visit others.  Turns out when you have an adorable baby people come to you, so we didn't have to do as much driving as we thought and still got to visit a lot of folks while there.  Karen has a great black lab named Charlie, and Madeline loves dogs so she got to spend a bunch of time hanging out with her new doggie friend.  She hasn't quite got the word doggie down but saying "diddle-diddle" and pointing to the dog every time she saw Charlie was easy enough for even us to figure out.

Kurt and Deb with Madeline

Karen's dad, my uncle Lowell supposedly lives nearby in Dayton, but travels so much he is rarely home and we got lucky and had a chance to visit him our first night in Walla Walla before he was off to Seattle.  Who would have guessed it would be so hard to track down an 87 year old, but it seems we are not the only wanderers in the family.  Cousin Margaret also lives in Walla Walla and she joined us for dinner as well.

Aunt Mary Ann with Madeline

Karen's brother Kurt and his wife Deb live in Walla Walla as well, but Kurt drives truck so we thought we would miss seeing him, even though Deb did get a chance to come over for a visit one morning.  Turned out we got lucky and Kurt made it back in time for a quick visit on Saturday before we headed out.

Pat and Madeline at lunch

Next we headed over to Pomeroy for lunch with Aunt Mary Ann (confusingly also called Aunt Molly by about half the family).  Joining us for lunch was cousin Pat who also lives in Pomeroy and has taken over the family wheat farm nearby.  After a very enjoyable afternoon visiting, we raced back to Walla Walla for dinner with Karen, cousin Teresa and her daughter Molly, and Margaret.

Teresa, Madeline, and Molly
(with Douglas the sheep)

If you are confused at this point about our family tree, you are not alone.  Karen's mom Aggie and Mary Ann are sisters, my dad was their brother.  So the aunt/uncle thing is pretty clear, although there are more siblings that we will hopefully see later in this trip.  Karen, Margaret, Kurt, Pat, and Teresa, among many others, are my cousins.  Teresa's daughter Molly, or Karen's daughter Courtney make it a bit more confusing involving second cousins or cousins once removed, depending on if it is in relation to myself or my daughter Madeline.
I decided to give up and consider anyone below aunt/uncle to be a cousin.  Probably a good thing since Karen's daughter Courtney also has a daughter named Madeleine.