More ramblings from me!

Wow really its been a week now. A week since my brother died. Who knew a week could really go that fast?! I did not go back to work like I had once planed. It was a blessing and a curse. Between the funeral Monday and just the rest of the weeks events I guess it was for the best. I have kept busy this week mostly dealing with family stuff but busy busy none the less. I can not thank the family and friends that I have enough for being so wonderful and supportive during this time. There is such a huge list I will just use the generic thank you and hope that it will suffice!
So tomorrow is an exciting day and to me its a day of celebration. After years of estrangement from most of my moms side of the family we will tomorrow, under better circumstances than earlier this week, reunite and have a wonderful cook out and swim party at my cousin Kristin's house. Now if you knew me growing up as a kid you know I have a massive family and I love it! Well as I got older and our family problems grew we all kind of well lost touch. It made me sad. I like my cousin Tim agree the best times and his fondest memories where at are family gatherings and of course not to mention all the holidays. We would have so much fun running around playing games doing what ever while the adults caught up cooked and drank. I think most of my memories where at my Aunt Ann's house though. Out of all of them she had the biggest house and man she loved to cook and entertain! I would look forward to those times as a child. Its what made my childhood well more bearable! As the tension in the family grew and my parents just well lost touch the also did with their families. There where fights and falling outs between everyone so we kind of became our own entity and started our own traditions. I hated it. I wanted my big family back because I think being adopted family had much more value and meaning to me. I needed it I thrived on it. I am sure it might not have meant as much to them as it did me but still it was an important time. I guess at first looking back I never saw it as this horrible traumatic thing but now I see from this adult perspective and being a parent that it was bad and it should not have been the way it was. I will not discount the fact that we had a coosh lifestyle and had a lot and was well privileged. I am glad for what I had and I will never take that away from them but I think about it more now it was probably a I don't know a guilt thing. They felt bad for what they had put us through so buying us off and spoiling us was there best line of defense. I might not have been physically abused much but the verbal and the psychological abuse was bad. I feared my parents I never wanted to talk to them I never felt i could go to them. Well ok let me take that back I loved my dad I was a total daddies girl and I felt close to him but he had his moments. My parents never really encouraged our extra curricular activities just dance. That is the one thing my mom showed any interest in for us. If it was anything else she blew us off. I was a great runner. I loved track it was my passion so was drill team. I remember never having them in the stands. Well my dad and Aunt Sue showed up for a meet and I kicked ASS!! I remember getting White Citation for drill team and having to beg my mom to drive out to Frisco to see me. She not only sat on the wrong side of the field with the opposing team she barely made it to see me and left right after! I was so flipping angry. I realized that no matter what I did no matter my accomplishments it just didn't matter. I started to give up I didn't care about school or anything. I now know stupid mistake but live and learn correct?! So now that you can see a glimpse of my past you can maybe understand why I am excited about tomorrow. Ok I will fill you in. Tomorrow afternoon me and my kiddos are heading to my cousin Kristin's house for a cook out and swimming. I kid you not I think with well everyone on my mom's side of the family coming (not my mom!) and minus Camie and Jenny I think maybe close to 40 family members there. See told you big family. I love big family I want my kids to know all about their family and be close to them like I was once close to mine. We all agree its baby steps but baby steps eventually turn in to steady steps. I want those steady steps that lead to my family that I miss so much. The last few months of growing close to my Aunt Karen, my wonderful god mother, have been so nice. We talk all the time she is involved she is there if I need her its a true blessing.
On a totally different topic I have created a web page for my brother. There are pictures and stuff on there along with a guest book. For those of you want to please sign it . My hope was to have our family and friends who knew him leave some sort of favorite memory or something so that we could all continue to look back and remember all the people he touched and realized how truly loved and cared for he was. For those seeking answers to his death I do not have them. They said Monday at the latest. Cross your fingers if not we have to wait up to 6 weeks for all the final results to come back. So I am sending this one off for the night. Sorry for the rambling. I have also included the link! http://memorialwebsites.legacy.com/alexgoldstrich/Homepage.aspx