cousins
My grand nephew, Weston is the oldest son of my niece, Machelle Moore, and her husband Steve. Coming from a family of tall people, Weston is a tall, broad shouldered kid…the exact kind of kid a football coach likes to have when it comes to defending the quarterback. When Weston was in Casper last weekend to celebrate his great grandmother’s birthday, I had a chance to visit with him for a while. The first thing he told me about was that he plays football, and that he likes the game. Of course, games are a big part of Weston’s life…like most kids his age, and many adults. Computer games have taken the lead over any other type of game for most people. Whether you play on the internet against other people, or on the computer, by yourself. It seems to be the wave of the future…and one I have pretty much shunned. Weston, on the other hand has embraced it, and 
is from what I hear pretty good at the games.
Like most boys his age, Weston is into cars. He can’t drive yet, of course, but he is checking out all the possibilities when it comes to the type of ride he will choose. He is now just one year away from getting that all important permit that will put his parents nerves on edge…for a while at least. Checking out Weston’s Facebook page, you would find monster truck type vehicles, as well as the muscle car type. That is so typical of so many guys. The ride is what it’s all about. I mean, a bicycle is simply not a chick magnet!! If a guy wants to attract the girls, he is going to have to have a car the girls want to ride in.
Like many people from Wyoming, Weston likes the great outdoors. Hunting, fishing, and camping are among the awesome things to do here, and Weston has a great time doing all three, especially when he gets to go with his friend and now cousin, Riley. The boys don’t get to see each other very much since Riley’s move to Casper, but whenever they are together, they are sill best friends. They like to do the same things, and play many of the same games. I’m sure the move has been a little hard on them, because they were such good friends, so I am happy that the are both on Facebook now, so they can keep in touch again. Today is Weston’s 14th birthday. Happy birthday Weston!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
For some time now, I have been trying to find any information on the family of my Great Grandma Henriette Hensel Schumacher. The pictures we have of Grandma’s immediate family, which includes my grandmother, Anna Schumacher Spencer, always seem to include two cousins. We know that their names are Anna Schubring and Laura Kurth. We don’t know if those are maiden names or married names, and that makes this harder. Recently, I found a picture of a family, and I believe that the oldest girl is Laura Kurth. The other girls did not exactly look like Anna Schubring, but I thought that possibly this family was my great grandmother’s sisters family. She was the sister that my grandmother came to America with, and since her first husband died, and she remarried and had more children, That could explain the difference in the two girls features.
Last night I stumbled upon a little bit more information. The girls are not sisters, or even half sisters, as I had originally thought they might be. My sister, Cheryl thought that the father in the family picture looked a bit like our Great Grandfather Carl Schumacher, and thought he could be his brother. I now believe that she is right in that. What I found is a page from my Uncle Bill’s family history, but it wasn’t with the rest of his history books…it was in some pictures he had sent to my cousin, Tracey Schumacher-Inglimo’s family. This picture tells us that Anna Schubring is the daughter of one of Great Grandma Henriette Hensel Schumacher’s sister and that she came from Canada. Anna could possibly be the daughter of the sister that my great grandmother came to America with, whose husband died a short time later, and she remarried and had more children. Having a step father could also be part of the reason that Anna spent so much time with her Aunt Henriette’s family. Sometimes the step parent situation doesn’t work out so well for some of the children. If Anna is that child, then she has a sibling that would be from that first marriage too, but we don’t really have any information on that.
Laura Kurth is also a cousin, but on the Schumacher side, so Cheryl is probably right in that she thought the father in the family picture looked like our great grandfather, Carl Schumacher’s side of the family. Cheryl also thought that Anna looked older than Laura, so she might be correct in that too. Laura’s family lived in the Mazeppa, Minnesota area, which might explain why she spent a lot of time with her Aunt Henriette and Uncle Carl’s family…not 
to mention that she and my grandma, Anna Schumacher Spencer were fairly close in age. I am also assuming that Kurth was Laura’s married name, and that her dad was the Schumacher brother, but I could be mistaken in that too, and it could be that her mother was the blood relation to my great grandfather. I may never find out for sure just how these cousins fit into our family, but I will most likely not stop looking until I do find out. Nevertheless, these pictures lad me to believe that my great grandparents were very close to their siblings, even if there is a sense of mystery to my family and their elusive ancestors too.
Whenever our cousins came to visit from Wisconsin, we always had such a great time. Hanging out in Uncle Bill’s bus, playing in the yard, playing cribbage, going for ice cream, or just hanging out with the cousins…it didn’t matter what exactly, just that they were here to visit again. We felt that way about all of our out of town cousins. In fact, the only thing that was bad about those visits was the end of them, and it always came too soon. I’m one of those people who really hates to say goodbye, especially when I know it will be for a long time. If I had my way, all those people that I love would live in the same town.
When it was time for them to begin the journey home, everyone tried to lighten the mood. We did goofy little things to make each other laugh, even though we were all sad. Of course, we had to take the pictures that last day too, because we wanted something to remember each other by, until the next time we got to see each other. There was still so much to say, and everyone wanted to talk at once, hoping to get just a few more moments with the cousins. A week just isn’t enough time to spend with your cousins. We promised to write to them more often, even though we had promised before and did for a while, and then got busy with our own lives again. I think we knew that writing wasn’t really going to happen, as we promised. Finally it was time to go, and all that was left was the hugging and waving goodbye, and the wishing that the week was just starting, instead of ending. Life seemed a little more mundane after they left. We had to think of things to do, and nothing seemed interesting now. Even the things we had done when they were here were less interesting.
The sad thing is that as we grow older, and have families of our own, sometimes those relationships are lost and become distant, because everyone is so busy. Seldom do the kids 
get together they way they did when they lived at their parent’s home. Families grow apart, and then comes the point when they almost don’t feel comfortable sitting down to talk, because they don’t know what to say to each other. They have both lived such different lives, with little in common, and it just gets awkward. Soon, it’s just easier to forgo the visits all together. Then comes the moment when the cousin or their parents pass away, and you feel bad because you have been out of touch for so long…and you feel great regret, but it is too late. I wish I had more time with all my cousins and I’m thankful for Facebook, which has reconnected so many of us virtually, and that is the next best thing to being there.
Kids have always tried to use things around them as props in their games. Things like boxes, barrels, and even a little taller hill become the prop of the day. When I saw this picture of Bob’s brother, Ron, his cousins, Danny and Sandy, and a neighbor girl playing on four oil drums, all I could think was “Roll out the barrel, and we’ll have a barrel of fun.” Of course, that is the “Beer Barrel Polka” song, which was composed by the Czechoslovakian musician Jaromír Vejvoda in 1927, and really had nothing to do with a child’s game at all, but the words seemed so fitting in the case of the game the kids were obviously playing. The barrels must have either had something in them, or been pretty heavy in their own right, because it doesn’t appear that they wanted to roll around on the kids. Still, in my imagination, I could see them racing down the driveway to see who would get to the finish line first. It doesn’t really matter what they were doing with the barrels, because it is obvious that they thought being up on them was great fun. If they looked back now, they would probably wonder how such an inanimate object, with no moving parts and no flashing lights, could possibly have held their interest, but you must understand that their childhood was a time of no computers, cell phones, or video games…at least for a few more years, so they used their imaginations to have fun.
The same applies to the game “King of the Hill”, which was of course to see who could dominate the hill and keep everyone else from being able to get up it. Of course, I don’t think that is exactly what my Aunt Laura and her friend were playing either, but it did, nevertheless 
appear that Aunt Laura had managed to acquire the taller of the two little hills, thus making her the King…so to speak. Whatever the game was that the girls were playing, the two little hills figured into it enough to make my grandmother want to take their picture as a memory of the occasion. Here again, the girls had used the things available to them to make for a day of fun. Kids used to be able to do that. Without video games and texting, and with parents who didn’t let them watch television all day, or without television at all, the imagination was the way to have fun. It really seems to be a lost art today. Kids don’t used their imaginations much these days, because all the stuff in their head is fed in electronically. That’s really quite sad, when you think about it.
So often, we take many of the people in our lives for granted. We just assume that they will always be there, and never consider the events in their past that…were it not for the grace of God, would have taken their lives, possibly before we even knew them. That is the case with my Uncle George. Were it not for the grace of God, he would have been killed in action in World War II, before he ever had the chance to meet and marry my Aunt Evelyn, becoming father of my cousins, and an uncle to me and the rest of the cousins. Uncle George, like my dad, my Uncle Larry, Uncle Wayne, and many other young men of that era, served his country during World War II. Many people serve in the wars our country has been involved in, and many people are injured and killed every day as a result of their service in our wars. In that way, Uncle George is not an unusual statistic, but what is unusual is that Uncle George survived…a head injury!!! He has had a plate in his head since that injury, but in every other way, he has lead a normal life.
People who don’t know about a situation, which was me concerning my Uncle George…until recently when I came across the Wyoming Wounded List where his name appears, usually assume that the person they know, and have known all their lives, was never wounded. Little did I know how very wrong I was. I knew that Uncle George has been in the Navy in World War II, but that was all I knew about his war history, and I only knew that because of a picture of my Aunt Evelyn, Uncle George, and my parents attending the Military Ball. You see, like most of the men who fought in World War II and probably many other wars too, Uncle 
George never spoke of those days. It was like he either wanted to forget, or more likely that he thought he had simply done his duty and it was no big thing, because he came home after all. Many military men feel that way. They think the heroes are the ones who died for their country, but that is not the only way to be a hero. Just going into battle, makes them a hero!!
After learning about my Uncle George’s injuries from World War II, I feel so much more blessed to have Uncle George in my life. Thinking that, but for the grace of God, he would never have been my uncle, makes that blessing very clear to me, and I thank God for his life and for making him my uncle. I can’t imagine our family without him in it, and I know everyone else agrees with me too. Today is Uncle George’s birthday. Happy birthday Uncle George!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
In the months since connecting with so many of my cousins on the Schumacher side of the family, we have found out that one of the original six children of Carl and Albertine Schumacher was not represented among the cousins. I set out with renewed determination to see if I could find out more than the little bit of information we had, which is that Mina Schumacher married John Spare, and they had one daughter, Pauline Jessie Spare. Someone thought that Pauline had two daughters and two sons. That was pretty much the extent of our knowledge of Mina’s family. Then I came across a tree on Ancestry.com that had a little bit more information. I found out at that time, that very sadly, Pauline had passed away in June of 2013. That information left me feeling both sadness, and great loss, because we had been so close to finding her and yet, we were so far. We were too late to have the chance to know Pauline.
I felt like I was stuck. I went back to the family tree that I had found on Pauline, and looked at the name of the owner…Julie Carlberg. We had thought that Pauline’s children were John, Lisa, Kristin, and Timothy, but when I looked at the home person on this tree, it was the daughter of Pauline. I wondered if Lisa, whose middle initial is J might be this Julie. I sent a message through Ancestry to Julie, but then I noticed that she had not been on in a couple of months. Then, I decided to look on Facebook, and I found her there, but she doesn’t get on there much either. Nevertheless, through a combination of these two places and the information I found there, I was able to Google her and found a work email…which is where I hit the jackpot!!!
I sent her an email on Monday night, and could hardly wait until Tuesday to see if she would respond…which she did. I am very excited to say that the cousin search just took a great big upward turn. Not only did I find Pauline, who went by Paula, but I found her four children, Lisa and her children, Jenny and James; John, his wife Diane, and their daughters, Allison and Abigail; Kristen and her sons, Jonathan and Timothy (yes there is a Timothy in the bunch, just not a son, but a grandson); and of course, Julie, her husband Andrew, and their three children 
Kevin, David, and Kendra. Julie was able to confirm that a picture of a little girl, who after a little thought I had suspected might be Pauline, was indeed Pauline, and that a large copy of this picture had hung in Pauline’s room. I also received a much more updated picture of Pauline, along with Julie and her daughter, Kendra. So now I believe that our family is much closer to coming full circle from complete disconnect to very connected, and I am very excited about getting to know these newly found cousins. This has been such a wonderful journey, and I thank God for each and every one of the precious cousins that He has now connected.
Many men and women have served in the military over the centuries, since the United States became a nation, and in the years that we fought for our independence. The weapons they used are as varied as they are, but no less deadly to the enemy. Their uniforms are different, and some may seem very strange to us, but each is easily recognizable as a military uniform, and you knew that they had served their country. Each has made the sacrifice…leaving loved ones behind at home, to go off and fight in a battle that in many cases didn’t seem like it was their own, yet they had to go, because they couldn’t leave those oppressed people to battle on their own, because they knew it was a battle they could not win alone. They went, because it was a matter of duty. It was a duty they could not ignore…their hearts would not let them ignore.
Today’s military is not a required job, there is no draft, although there could be if it became necessary, and our young men are required to register for the draft when they turn eighteen, just in case a draft became necessary. Nevertheless, today’s military men and women choose to take on the causes of a war ridden world, because they can’t bear to leave a people or nations unprotected. That takes a special kind of person…that one who puts themselves in harm’s way…by choice. They are a person to be admired and respected. I don’t say that those who do not join have done anything wrong, because they have not, but like the police officer, EMT, and fire fighter, this unique group of men and women have taken up a cause, and made it their own.
My dad, and many of my aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws, and cousins fall into that category of military personnel, and I am proud of each and every one of them for all they have done to make this world a little bit safer place. Their sacrifice has not gone unnoticed, nor will it ever be forgotten. Today, I want to thank all veterans everywhere, living and dead, for the sacrifice you have made to give me and all other Americans the freedoms that we enjoy, and to make this world a little bit safer for all the people who live in it. I know I can’t picture all of you, as you so richly deserve, but know that you are remembered, whether you are pictured here or not. Thank you all for your service!! God bless each and every one of you!!
I never knew my cousin Denny as a child, because I was not born yet, but I love looking at the old pictures of him and his brother, Gene. The both look so happy. Gene looks so proud that he has a little brother. It occurs to me that my cousin, Denny had to be a fun loving kid, because he so often is seen laughing, and I also think he must have been a curious kid, who didn’t like being cooped up in a stroller for very long…but then, what kid really ever did.
When my sisters and I were young, my cousin, Denny and his wife, Sandy lived here in Casper. We got to see them quite a bit, and I even babysat their son, David…my sisters might have too, but I can’t say for sure. We always loved having them come over to our house to visit. Then, they moved to Oregon, and we hardly got to see them anymore. We all really missed them a lot. Distance always seems to make the passing of time seem less noticeable, until you realize just how much time has truly passed….then you tend to feel the loss of those years very deeply. That is how I feel about the years that have gone by since we last saw Denny’s family, Gene’s family, and Aunt Laura. Both Gene and Aunt Laura are gone now, and that makes it all that much more sad. For that reason, I am very thankful for Facebook, so that those relationships can at least be rekindled virtually, if not in person.
Denny, like several of us in the family, inherited the family history bug. He has done extensive work on the history of our family and then collaborated with Uncle Bill to take it even further. Of course, there were others who helped too, including Denny’s brother, Gene, and their mom, my Aunt Laura, and his nephew, Tim, as well as a little help from me. It was a labor of love so that they could pass that precious history down to the rest of the family members…and my family and I have been blessed to be some of those people. Today is Denny’s birthday. Happy birthday Denny!! Have a wonderful day!! We love you!!
As Bob and I were having breakfast this morning, I noticed a family leaving the restaurant. They stopped outside to hug each other and say goodbye. There were two little girls there that the elder side of the family seemed especially sorry to see go, and it didn’t take much vision to realize that the younger side of the family had moved away from Casper, and the grandparents missed them terribly. My thoughts journeyed back to when my sisters and I were much younger and living at home with our parents. Almost all of us have either stayed in the Casper area, or returned to it now, but that doesn’t change the feelings that happened when we had to say goodbye to the ones who moved away for a time, or the feelings we felt when our cousins would visit and then had to go home.
It seems like more and more, families live in various places around the country, and even in totally different countries from their parents. While sometimes it is necessary for jobs and such, it doesn’t help the loneliness that it always creates on both sides of the situation. The hardest part is always the little kids, who don’t get to know their grandparents. Oh, they will get to know the a little on visits, through phone calls, and Skype, but they never really know them well…never feel the real bond. Those things are left to the family members who live nearby, and are privileged enough to have lots of contact with aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, children, grandparents, and grandchildren.
Of course, that is not the only way that people can miss their family members. So many people get wrapped up in their own lives, and forget that there are loved ones out there who would love 
to have a visit from them. People who can’t get to them so easily, and so depend on them to bring those little ones around so they can get to know them. Sadly those little ones have no say in the matter, and the time to let them share in the lives of their elder relation is so quickly lost…and once it’s gone, there is no going back. People really should try to think about how badly their loved ones could be missing those who are far away…or even those, who aren’t so far away.
A while back I discovered, or should I say, connected the Susan Spencer in Bob’s family tree to my family tree, thereby confirming the cousinship that I suspected between Bob and me. Recently, as I was looking again at the beautiful family tree that Hattie Goodman, who was an ancestor of Bob’s mother’s family, put together and I had seen so many years ago, I started thinking about some of the other implications of that connection…specifically regarding my family, and more specifically my sisters, nieces, and nephews.
So often, we go through life separating, or keeping our families straight by catagorizing them as our family and our in-laws. Then we look at the families of our siblings, and catagorize them 
as friends or our sibling’s family. And most of the time that works well, but in my situation, and that of my family…on both sides, it ended up being a little different.
I have to wonder if my sisters have considered the fact, that if Bob is my 10th cousin twice removed, he is also their 10th cousin twice removed. Now, that is interesting enough, but go one step further. If Bob is our 10th cousin twice removed, then his sisters and brother are also our 10th cousins twice removed…and to top it off, our kids are 10th cousins 3 times removed to Bob and his siblings. Ok, if you find that to be a little odd, then consider 
this. My girls are 10th cousins 3 times removed…to their dad!!! Now, that is totally mind blowing, but truth nevertheless!!
People could let such relationships get to be more of a big deal than they really are, if they aren’t careful, as was the case, when it came out that Prince William and Princess Kate are actually cousins. If you think about it, since we all came from Adam and Eve, I suppose that we are all cousins or some other relationship, so we might just as well get over the stigma that we have attached to that. In reality, we are all just one big happy faimly.
