Extended Family

[latenightapplepie]

After having spent a reasonably pleasant saturday night with my extended family for my cousin's 17th birthday, I thought of starting this thread.

What's your extended family like? Annoying? Diverse? Eccentric? Boozy? Just plain non-existent?

Do you meet up often enough? Or too often?

How much do you think you have been shaped by your extended family?

I have a reasonably large extended family with whom I manage to get along with pretty well thanks to their willingness to get to know me. In truth, I have some very kind and warm people among my extended family for whom I am very grateful.

Share your stories.

 

[goatzilla8463]

They suck.

 

[SharPhoe]

I have a very extended family, according to my parents. I just never met them. And when I do, I never remember who's who. It's kinda sad, really.

On a brighter note, I do know that I'm a distant cousin of the late Richard Pryor. So that's something.

 

[Mardy]

I've only seen my mother, father, brothers and sister. No one else.

 

[sirdanrhodes]

Murder is illegal, 'nuff said.

 

[bookboy]

my father's side is Jewish, My mother's side is Christian, so basically my entire mother's side and everyone on my dad's side except my grandmother has completely severed all ties with us for religious reasons.

 

[Gooble]

3 of my grandparents have passed away, the other one as Alzheimer's and doesn't know who anyone is. On my Dad's side I like my uncle, my aunt's OK, female cousin's a complete brat and male cousin's a mindless immature thug; on my Mum's side one aunt lives in some random place in North America and is very annoying and lacks any common sense (she and my Mum fell out severely when my aunt refused to write a will to protect some very precious family heirlooms that she'd inherited), and my other aunt lives in Hong Kong and her and my uncle are rich as hell; however they are very bad with children, me and my sister have only just recently found them to be bearable, and my uncle's extremely cynical and each year at Christmas he has his annual rant about everything which lasts several hours.

We do have nice family on my Mum's side, I very much like my Mum's cousin and his wife, and we went out to Canada in 2000 to meet a whole load of other relatives of my Mum's and they were all really nice.

However we've only met other relatives of my Dad once, at a wedding, because my Dad doesnt like them, they're too 'common' for him. I personally wouldn't mind seeing them more often, but it would be weird going to see them on my own.

We also have a relative called Robert Sinclair who seems to be the Black Sheep of the family, who I've never met and he's this like mysterious figure who people keep talking about but no one really seems to know much about him.