The last two weeks has been full of a family that goes by WALSH. This is my sweetheart's flesh and blood; a large, boisterous, witty and active crew who hail from the East Coast where I've been since the end of July. Each year for the past (7?) years, all ~28 of them gather at a large house and spend an entire week together, bodysurfing, playing corn hole, poker and Catch Phrase, napping, and eating a ton.
As soon as I landed in New York, I was taken into this family and hadn't left their sides until 2 days ago. Before I met them all, Lukas briefed me on all the relations. I studied the chart he drew up for me (below) in the hopes of preparing myself for the family pop quiz of who's who.
Fortunately, I was eased into the enormity of the family through the "Peter and Stephanie" branch of the tree for the first few days. As I quickly learned though, these two have an abode that is frequented by any number of other cousins and friends, so before we left for our week long family vacation I had already met about 11 of the family members!
The same day I met Lukas' parents, I shared a hotel room with them. But that's not all; we also bunked up with Lukas' grandma and her sister. It became a joke that I was going to be sleeping on the floor between the two beds of parents and grandma. Everyone was very easy to get along with, although the toilet was immediately clogged and fixed twice, and then again stopped up by the morning, so all 6 of us were shit out of luck. ;-) How's that for bonding with the family.
After that we had most of a week to lounge at a beachside house and do what our whims requested. I got plenty of family stories and successfully answered a plethora of questions about myself as I got to know all the Walsh characters.