Family Love

In case any one has been wondering what I have been doing all these days in London while Sean is at his internship, I have been diligently working at family history. I have been going into the Family History center almost every day like it was my job. I have spent hours and hours in front of computers looking for a needle in a hay stack. Sometimes I feel like I really have not made any progress but then I find one little date or another family member and from there I just get so excited that it keeps me going. One of the reasons that I really wanted to come to London is because my dad was born in England and I knew we still had family here that I really wanted to meet up with. Well, my dream has come true! While I have been here I have been able to make contact with two of my dad's cousins, Catherine and Richard. They are great! This weekend I had the opportunity to go visit our cousin Catherine, her husband Martin and their sons Timothy and Jonathan. They live in the beautiful tiny village of Kingsdown which is right on the coast. It was seriously the best weekend EVER! The whole weekend we spent going through old photos and reading old love letters and trying to put together the giant mystery of our family. There are so many names and places that we have made connections to but at the same time, we have not been able to pull all the lines together. It is so exciting. We would get into it and the time would just fly by. We also went to Catherine's mother's house to go through photos. There we found an envelope that said Cullis's pictures and it was full of pictures of little baby me! That was so fun to find. It really just solidified the fact that I was supposed to be there. There is something about family and just being able to click some times. I can not even tell you how much fun I have had this weekend laughing with my family as we researched our past. If we did nothing else on our whole trip, this one weekend would have made it all worth it.

Catherine and I with Daisy the dog on the beach with the white cliffs of Dover in the background.

Kingsdown

This is me and Timothy. I realized too late that I really should not stand next to him in pictures. He makes me look way too short.

Jonathan, Catherine's mom (my great aunt) Ivy, me and Timothy.

The whole family going through the mysterious tin of uncle Harry. Apparently he was quite the ladies man or liked his "nice piece of crumpet".

Seawards

Sean joined us on Sunday. This is the Dover port and the white cliffs of Dover in the background.

The cute little town of Kingsdown.

Catherine, Martin, me, Sean (and Daisy the dog).

Martin, Jonathan, Catherine, Timothy and me.