Thursday, October 3, 2013

a few bright spots...

I came home from our book signing events...
 to all kinds of busyness on the home front...
and haven't had a chance to tell you about our time in Victoria.


Though it was a wet and soggy weekend...
there were plenty of bright spots.

Let me share a few.
We have a friend in Victoria.
One we know well...
but had never met in person.
Lorrie has connected with us through Mennonite Girls Can Cook over the years.
She also visits me here at My Front Porch.
We figured out years ago that we were almost related.
Her Uncle Jake and Aunt Maggie are my Uncle Jake and Aunt Maggie.
That makes us 'almost cousins, right'?
 

Well, we have now officially met.
Lorrie (with the blue scarf) braved the rains...
and came out to meet us at Ten Thousand Villages in Victoria.
She was no stranger...
just a friend we had not yet met.
How nice to spend some face-to-face time with you, Lorrie!

The manager of the TTV's store had a message for me.
She had received a phone call from a cousin of mine...
checking on the details of the book signing.
She was planning on coming to meet me...
and had a book she wanted signed.

Really?
I couldn't for the life of me think of any of my cousins that were living near Victoria.
At last I remembered Brenda.
Of course!

So when this friendly gal walked up to the table...
looking right at me and smiling...
I had to do some quick thinking.

She looked familiar...
but who was she?


Definitely not Brenda.

Then I remembered!
I have a cousin Linda that lives on the Vancouver Island as well.
I hadn't seen her in years.
She brought a book to be signed and we had the nicest time catching up.

When she saw the Celebrations cookbook...
she decided she should have one of those as well.
It was long after she was gone...
that I remembered what I should have told her.


I'm sure she got a bit of a surprise when she turned to page 106 of Celebrations...
and saw the picture of the Tea Party in Ukraine...circa 1926.
In the very middle of the photo is her mother (my aunt)...
Maria Isaak.

When Linda came to visit...
Lorrie was still in the store.
Guess what I discovered.
Linda's hubby is Lorrie's uncle.
See...we really are almost related!

Those are just a few of the bright spots of our weekend events.
Just in case you want to hear a few more...
from other perspectives...


15 comments:

  1. I just loved the part about the connections! Definitely a reason to travel across the pond! Great photos of the groupings!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know they accuse folks in my corner of all being related. Ha! Guess that it is true everywhere. What fun to learn all the connections. Must be kind of hard to keep track of everybody!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, that was so fun meeting your cousins! Connections and relations are so amazing sometimes. Lovely photos and so nice to see Lorrie.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How cool! What a wonderful opportunity to renew relationships and catch up with women who are special to you. Great story!

    ReplyDelete
  5. How amazing to find all these family connections! Somehow I always thought that you knew Lorrie well. How nice to meet with her for the first time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Loved you and your cousin we able to reconnect!!! Loved this story :-)


    Hugs!

    ReplyDelete
  7. What fun connections for sure. It's always great to find an almost cousin or cousin's cousin in the mix!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's fun to have traveled this weekend together and find your bright spots. Some great connections when people come together with similar backgrounds and interests. That's what makes this so worthwhile.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love all these connections...adds to the fun and interest of our journey. Funny, last night we were sitting around our table with my dad and Alice and connected a lot of family lines too....some were pretty far fetched.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Such wonderful bright spots!!! You gals are so wonderful and look amazing on the pictures. The ripple effect of your book connects so widely and who knows how far it will reach!

    ReplyDelete
  11. It was so much fun to actually meet you in person. It felt like we could just sit down and chat. The connections are fun to make, too. So glad we're "almost related."

    ReplyDelete
  12. This made me smile, Judy. The stories you tell of cousins and 'almost related' could be from Cape Breton! Everyone is related or almost related there!

    ReplyDelete
  13. A delightful story! You can never have too much family, including almost-cousins! The more the merrier.

    ReplyDelete
  14. How utterly AMAZING!!! You know, life really is more fascinating the more we learn of it! Loved seeing all your pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  15. What an interesting story! Connecting and discovering new connections, sure does make life enjoyable. The picture of your cousin's mother is a beautiful old picture! What a treasure to her that you used that picture in your book. I appreciate when you share pictures of the people you post about. In the midst of your sadness, how nice that God gave you some bright spots.

    ReplyDelete

'The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.'
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson