My family tree is almost a redwood!
Because redwoods are BIG!
Today I thought I'd blog about my family. I went to my cousin's wedding on Sunday. It was a whole family affair, with relatives coming over from all four corners of the world (that is such an odd expression... but anyway...). Now, my family is big... and when I say it's big I don't mean I have a handful of cousins and a more than a few aunts. I mean it's HUGE! And I am blessed to be able to keep in touch with a lot of my cousins my age, even more so thanks to the invention of both the internet and facebook... and when friends ask how me and my cousins are related, and I explain that our grandfathers were brothers, they reply 'oh, not that close then' but my family is so tight knit that they may as well be my first cousin.
So, yes, my family is humungous... let me explain why. My great grandfather had two wives. Wife number one had 6 children, as did wife number two. That means I have 12 great aunts and uncles... and 41 aunts and uncles.... don't even make me count how many cousins there are or I'll be here all day.
Obviously, not ALL the family came to the wedding... some are deceased, some in far flung parts of the world, and some more distant relatives than others, but a fair few attended and it made me very very thankful I started generating a family tree for everyone to access online. A few years back I got fed up having to quiz my Mum as to which aunty had just exclaimed "My god, you've grown up so much... when are you getting married?" at each family event (yes, I have got to that age where I get the 'it's your turn next' talk... which results in my squirming in my seat and informing them that a) my cousin Russell is older and next in line and b) I am in absolutely no hurry as I'm not 30 quite yet), so I started inputting as much data as I could into some geneology software. The result was a whole website complete with a fairly comprehensive (and constantly growing) family tree, photo albums of family gatherings, recipes, events, calendars and so on. I have to say I'm pretty proud of my hard work! And when my uncle gave me a copy of what he'd worked on so far, the tree grew even more. So Sunday's wedding was a great opportunity to meet faces I'd only ever tagged online, and get photos to add to the website.
The tree only goes back as far as my great grandfather... I haven't even begun to embark on attempting to document the 300 years worth of names etched into our family shrine in China....
My family is also extremely diverse. I'm obviously half Chinese half Irish, but I have cousins who are half Chinese.... half Greek... half English... half Malaysian... when we all get together we don't look alike in the slightest bit!
And that's just my Chinese side... my Irish side is probably just as big... but I'll save that for another post! I'm really proud to be part of such a big family.
Today I thought I'd blog about my family. I went to my cousin's wedding on Sunday. It was a whole family affair, with relatives coming over from all four corners of the world (that is such an odd expression... but anyway...). Now, my family is big... and when I say it's big I don't mean I have a handful of cousins and a more than a few aunts. I mean it's HUGE! And I am blessed to be able to keep in touch with a lot of my cousins my age, even more so thanks to the invention of both the internet and facebook... and when friends ask how me and my cousins are related, and I explain that our grandfathers were brothers, they reply 'oh, not that close then' but my family is so tight knit that they may as well be my first cousin.
So, yes, my family is humungous... let me explain why. My great grandfather had two wives. Wife number one had 6 children, as did wife number two. That means I have 12 great aunts and uncles... and 41 aunts and uncles.... don't even make me count how many cousins there are or I'll be here all day.
Obviously, not ALL the family came to the wedding... some are deceased, some in far flung parts of the world, and some more distant relatives than others, but a fair few attended and it made me very very thankful I started generating a family tree for everyone to access online. A few years back I got fed up having to quiz my Mum as to which aunty had just exclaimed "My god, you've grown up so much... when are you getting married?" at each family event (yes, I have got to that age where I get the 'it's your turn next' talk... which results in my squirming in my seat and informing them that a) my cousin Russell is older and next in line and b) I am in absolutely no hurry as I'm not 30 quite yet), so I started inputting as much data as I could into some geneology software. The result was a whole website complete with a fairly comprehensive (and constantly growing) family tree, photo albums of family gatherings, recipes, events, calendars and so on. I have to say I'm pretty proud of my hard work! And when my uncle gave me a copy of what he'd worked on so far, the tree grew even more. So Sunday's wedding was a great opportunity to meet faces I'd only ever tagged online, and get photos to add to the website.
The tree only goes back as far as my great grandfather... I haven't even begun to embark on attempting to document the 300 years worth of names etched into our family shrine in China....
My family is also extremely diverse. I'm obviously half Chinese half Irish, but I have cousins who are half Chinese.... half Greek... half English... half Malaysian... when we all get together we don't look alike in the slightest bit!
And that's just my Chinese side... my Irish side is probably just as big... but I'll save that for another post! I'm really proud to be part of such a big family.
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