p0nk - tastes like chicken...

...at least according to our hero, Angry Ferret Jones. Little does he know how right he is.
One of the more enlightening things about family get-togethers, like Thanksgiving, is that after the first 10 minutes of dissing each others sports teams, music taste, and politics, we fall into discussing family.
My parents now live in Grass Valley, CA, not too far from the infamous Donner Pass. There has always been some vague oral tradition that we had some family involvement in the historical debacle. Recently, my parents visited the museum commemorating the historical event and the pieces finally fell into place.
What a lot of people don't know about infamous Donner event is that there was another group traveling with them from Missouri to Salt Lake City. The Cyrus family parted ways with them in Salt Lake, leaving several days earlier. As the early storm approached, Pleasant Cyrus, 21yo son of Enoch Cyrus went back to warn the Donner group and push them to speed up. Traveling alone, he was able to catch back up to his family who all arrived safely in the Napa valley. When the storm hit full force and the Donner group was clearly in trouble, the Cyrus men were part of the search party to go out looking for them.
And you probably know most of the story as how to how things went for them.
In the aftermath, John Cyrus, younger brother to Pleasant married one of the survivors, Lavina Graves, and a picture of the two of them is in the museum.
Enoch Cyrus was my great great great great grandfather via one of his other sons, William, making John Cyrus my great great great uncle, and Lavina Graves, a Donner Party survivor, my great great great aunt by marriage.
The significance of this was all lost on the little p0nks of course, and learning that we had Cyrus heritage, I was tasked to find out if my children were related to Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana), daughter of famous country-western singer, Billy Ray Cyrus. As it turns out, Enoch Cyrus' father James Cyrus was brother to Jesse Cyrus, great great great grandfather of said Billy Ray. Little P0nks, especially p0nkette, were estatic to learn that they shared great great great great great (5x great) grandfather with Hannah Montana. I am now a hero in my children's eyes.