Our Families
Our families are near, far, and all around. Other words to describe them would be massive and everywhere. Ben has 22 first cousins and Nicola has 56. We’ve never been anywhere in the world where there wasn’t a relative willing to host us or join us for an adventure. Nicola comes from an Irish immigrant family in Canada. Her mother Carole and father Bob moved their family to Canada in the early 1980s to escape the Troubles and find work. Her family had a particular issue with the Troubles as her mother is Protestant and her father is Catholic. Since love doesn’t always listen to religion they had to journey to the Channel island of Jersey to get married, as there wasn’t a priest in Ireland that would marry them. They had Nicola and her sister Karen and moved the whole bunch to Canada. Since then, Nicola has picked up a brother-in-law (Karen’s high school boyfriend) and a niece and nephew, the lovely Nora and Owen. Ben’s family started when his parents met at a college dorm party and has grown from there. His mother Susan saw promise in his father Gary and together they went through college and medical school together. After getting their MDs and hanging up their shingle in Central Wisconsin they decided they were ready for an addition to their family. When they saw that Ben was such an easy kid, they decided to add two more to the clan and along came his sister Gabrielle and sibling Madsen. They received another blessing - and Ben finally got a brother! - when Gabi married Matt. They’ve since enhanced the family further with the addition of Catherine and Everett. Our nuclear families visit often despite them living a little distance away. Matt and Gabi in Minnesota work as a pediatrician and engineer, Karen and Garreth in Canada work as a speech pathologist and accounting partner, and Madsen in Michigan works as a research scientist. As with any family, their visits will most likely increase significantly with the arrival of a new grandchild. Our support system is real, enthusiastic, and thrilled to expand the circle of love. Our Framily is also a big part of our lives. When we left our families and moved to New York in our 20s, we quickly connected with like-minded friends who had also moved away from their families. They became our Framily. These are people we see every week and would drop anything if we needed them. We experience the joys of living in New York together and have developed our own holidays outside of traditional holidays so we can celebrate events with them (think Friendsgiving and Football Sunday). Our kids will grow up knowing them as aunts and uncles, and they will love our children like their own.