Busy weekends...

I haven't blogged about our busy weekends! The story will take a few blogging posts and I'll in order from last weekend to this. Last weekend Bryan went to McKinney to host his brother's bachelor party. (Whoo-hoo!) If photos or stories exist from this party, I am not privvy to them and I suspect "What happened at Bachelor Party Weekend - stays at Bachelor Party Weekend." I do know that they ate at Bone Daddy's and partied at Dave & Busters. (I know this because I saw the credit card bill. LOL!) I also know that Bryan and Brad had a really great time. Bryan had a smile stuck on his tired face when he came home, and when I asked if he & Brad had a good time, he smiled bigger and said, "Yeah."

While he was recuperating from partyin' and getting ready to drive home to us, I took the girls to our annual Messina Family Reunion.

My grandmother is on the far right in red. Her sister-in-law (Aunt Jo) is in green. Her neice (Mom's cousin) is in the middle in pink. Mary Ann (the one having fun) is married to another cousin - and you can tell we all have a really fun time with each other. Each year for the past 11 years the families descended from three of the four Messina sisters have gotten together for a reunion. Grandpa and Aunt Jo's mother was Maria Messina who married Pete Maniscalco. (See here for their story.)

Mom is really in her element at the reunions. She and several of her cousins are responsible for keeping the family connected. With a group this large it's easy to get disconnected. (Mary, my g-grandmother, had 9 children who survived to adulthood; her sister Angelina had 9 also; and another sister, Antonia, had five. All have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.) It seems like every year there is someone "new" attending the reunion. Last year we put together a PowerPoint show of all the family. It runs about twenty minutes. The family trees go back in Sicily to the mid-1700s.

Next year we will celebrate the Maniscalco family centennial - 100 years since Grandpa Maniscalco came over from Sicily through New Orleans on March 11, 1908. Grandma and Aunt Lena arrived a year later - July 1, 1909 - through Ellis Island.