What's A Swoope?

One of the greatest things to come about from marrying my DH is that I got a WHOLE lot more family. I always thought that my family was pretty big with my parents and the five of us kids. I got over that when I met my DH though. He was one of 14 living siblings with two of them passing away as either toddler or infant. Now at this point I have to interject that I did the calculations on this and my MIL, was pregnant for 12 years out of 30. Yep, you heard me right, she had her first child when she was 17 and her last child when she was 47. I should also tell you at this point, I have never known a finer person than Miss Carrie or Granny. Talk about love multiplying. She made every child, son or daughter-in-law, and grandchild feel like she loved them most. In the years that I knew her, I never heard her say an unkind word about anyone.

At any rate, one of the things that we started doing as the Grands started getting married was taking a picture of the Siblings and then a picture of all the Swoopes that were present. I have these pictures sitting all around my house and it's fun to look at them and see Miss Carrie's namesake when she was 18 months old in her mom's arm in one picture and then see her day at 28 pregnant with her first child. At one of the niece's wedding we were doing the "family" picture and there was one little boy that kept trying to get into the picture. His DM pulled him aside and tried explaining to him that you had to be a Swoope to be in the picture. He looked up at her and asked "What's a Swoope?

Over the weekend we had our annual "Around the 4th of July Shrimp Boil". We haven't done a set of Swoope pictures lately. I decided we needed an updated "What's a Swoope" set of pictures, especially since the oldest sister at 87 is getting frailer with each passing day. The 13 surviving Swoope Siblings were all present,

although one was late getting there and isn't pictured. The first picture is of the Swoope Siblings recorded on 7-3-2010. The oldest is on the bottom right and the youngest is standing on the far left. The second picture shows all the Swoopes that were still around for the picture. There were 79 present(no where near all of them), but some had left to go fishing and others were wandering around. The last is a picture of 16 of the 26 first cousins that were present. The woman on the front row in the green shirt is my niece that it is expecting the next great nephew in the family. The youngest nephew is the giant in the center on the back row and the oldest nephew is standing immediately to his right.

No card today to post yet today, but give me time. I'm home and totally unpacked and in TM to work on a challenge card or two.