Family Adventures

We had a nice, lazy weekend punctuated in the middle by the traditional family Christmas dinner with Paula's Dad's (John Paul "Hunk" Collins) family on Saturday evening. Liddy is the matriarch and travels the world with her youthful husband Charles Whedbee. Liddy is Hunk's little sister and the only surviving sibling of three boys and four girls. She tears up a little if you talk about that. Liddy has four kids from an earlier marriage to another man named Charles Davidson who's dead now. Charles Whedbee refers to himself stoically as "Number 2".
The family is prolific with lots of great people about whom I always wish I knew more. There are four kids -

• Martha is married to John Cooper who's a manufacturing engineer and travels a lot.
  
• Lynne married Prabhakar Pendse. We are headed to India with them in March.
  
• Wayne Davidson is married to Cindy - a school teacher.
  
• and Jeff is married to Deedee.
  

Martha and John have three kids, Michael, Kate and Lindsay. Kate lives in Portland with her husband Jeff Kern. We've been telling Kate that she can only buy her lunch from the Dump Truck. Lindsay (newly wed in October) lives in Savannah where she's starting a boutique with the support of her lawyer husband Patrick LeMaster.
Between Lynne and Prabhakar, there are at least 6 kids. Lynne's daughter Kelly got married to Greg Capobianco in Wilmington last New Year's Eve. Brandon Crockett is working for Disney down in Florida and couldn't make it this year. You guys have met one of Prabhakar's daughters.
Wayne and Cindy's daughter Nancy is a Wake Forest student and has spend some time in Russia working with an orphanage. I wish she were able to meet William, Fujiko, Masha and Sayaka but their path's never coincided.
And Jeff has two kids, Chris and Bailey. Bailey is 11 and really looks up to all the more mature women who are her cousins and great role models.
All-in-all, it's great to hang around and share tales with that crowd. Paula and I can hold our own with adventure stories but we wish we could show off our own kids. You guys would all love each others' company, enthusiasm, and spirit of adventure.