Veintisiete Anos; Familia ++ (and obviously late postings)

It's basically impossible to sum up my lifetime in a blog posting, and maybe I'll take on that challenge when I'm 30. I'd need a round number to justify working so hard I guess. In anycase, thank you pre-emptively for your birthday wishes.

One of the more amusing aspects of my birthday (and in correlation my brother's and my cousins') is that for 1 month I'm either the same age as my brother, or the same age as my cousin. My brother Jay is a mere 10 months younger than myself, and my cousin Christopher is 11 months older than me. In fact, the next male cousin in this series (and so far the oldest mentioned) is my cousin Francis. He's only 6 month's older than Christopher. It's no wonder we're all so close.

To better understand the social dynamic of we the Fantastic 4, it helps to know that our 3 mothers are part of a nuclear sisterhood of six Castor family girls. Francis, Chris, Jay and myself are a tight cluster of a larger bunch of first cousins. Growing up it was like having one brother, and 2 half brothers. As you can imagine, we might have fought constantly, but for the most part we were our own little gang. Many times the cluster of cousins older than us would prop us up and adopt us as two distinct armies. The Layug brothers against the Silva-Atraje Conglomerate. Numerous sports and physical challenges ensued with this pitting of tiny titan vs tiny titan. Football, baseball, basketball, boxing (always a family favorite), wrestling (Greco-roman, and WWF) were but some of the activities that minor bloodshed occurred. I think the only really mental game we played was probably 52-card pickup, and even then it only happened 4 times total. (1 per mark). I have no qualms in saying I had a enriching and thoroughly magnificent childhood that warrants jealousy. For those with limiting circumstances, it's hard to compare, since my childhood came with it's own set of 3 other friends/rivals, of which I'm truly lucky to have. But we're not the only cluster to happen, and certainly not the last within our lineage.

My maternal grandfather, Leon had no sons, so I guess his daughters took it upon themselves to churn out babies like there was no tomorrow. All in all, the Six have created 2.5 kids apiece. The turns out like this:

My aunts/mother listed with baby named in order of appearance.

Edna: First out the gate with Noel
Edna: Repeat Victory with Irwin
Merle: Usurper with Dennis
Merle Follow up with Francis
Nimia: Christopher to steal the thunder
Florida: For the steal with the first girl cousin in the family Jannelle!
Irma: Sneaking in with Yours truly
Irma: Nabbing the award for fastest repeat with my "irish" twin Alexir John (Jay)
Nimia: 2nd Girl Jennifer
Florida: 3rd Girl Jeannete
Irma: 4th Girl My sister Kirsten
Claridad: Bringing it back male side of things with Raymond
Claridad: Mixing it up with Katie
Claridad: A trifecta with Robert!
Florida: Coming back with the last first cousin and a girl to boot, Jackie.


At this point, I didn't have time to go any further the entire week on writing, and frankly the post got bloated past all things, because to describe my family probably requires the same amount of time that the 30 year old post would.

So for the record, I'm 27, I'm grown up, and I come from the finest filipino stock this side of the pacific. And I'm tragically late on posting this by 4 days.

-k