I'm The Worst Blogger in the World

Well almost, so I have decided that this year I will blog more that once every couple of months.

Call it a new years resolution if you like.

so Happy New Year to all!

Last year was one of those years where i sort of unintentionally got back in touch with people who I haven't seen form quite some time, some i made a conscious effort to get in touch, and others just happened by accident.

I will list a couple of them here and also add some of the pictures and a few lines on each, the first one was when we were in Florida on holiday this year, there were quite a few acquaintances during that trip, the first was my cousin Wayne, i haven't seen him in years, and the last time we saw each other was at another wedding and so we really never got to talk, but this year we put a few ghosts to rest and i actually enjoyed the company, i think it was because we are both a little bit older and wiser. this picture is taken at crabby bills crap shack (most excellent BBQ ribs!).

I am on the left, Mike who's wedding it was is in the middle, and Wayne is on the right, as you can see, i tend to go red in the sun rather than brown, altho when i got back to the UK i looked brown next to all the people who hadn't been away, they were all a light shade of blue, it wasn't the best summer on record, was the wettest in living memory i think.

Anyway the next acquaintance was my Aunt Roxanne, it was years since i last saw her, and i was so pleased that she came to see the wedding, the nice thing was that because she came we managed to arrange a meeting with her son Peter, who i haven't seen in years, we were thinking about how long it was and the numbers were getting quite big, so we stopped!

Anyway here is a picture of me an Aunt Roxanne before the wedding.

While we are on about the wedding, there is another person who i hadn't seen in a long time, that was my Aunt Merry's Ex Husband David, he was there with his family, i had a chat before the reception, but as we were sat at the other side of the hall during the meal we only really exchanged pleasantries, but here is the picture anyway.

As you can see i have changed my shirt by this point, it was so hot that day that it was a real

"3 shirt day" anyway the next person isn't really a acquaintance, more of a first time meet.

my Aunt Penny was there with her new husband, Don. We talked a lot about the new James Bond film and stuff and once the dancing started he was up on the dance floor all night (actually it was until they had to leave as they had a long drive ahead of them).

Anyway back to the people who i have met again, as i said earlier we arranged to meet up with Peter, this is something i had wanted to do a couple of years earlier when we were in Florida for our Honeymoon, but was unable to do, and it is one of the things i promised Grandma I would do too and since she passed away the other year and i hadn't been in touch with peter i really wanted to do it this year.

We arranged to meet up at the Applebys in clearwater, i programmed the address into the satnav and we were off, only the satnev had no idea where we were going as it took us miles and miles out of our way, i think we ended up half way to Atlanta! anyway we found an Applebys and called and arranged for Peter to drive to us.

It was a really nice night, i wish that it hadn't been the last night of our holiday as it would have been nicer to see a little bit more of them, but it was good all the same, the picture attached is taken off my camera phone as we forgot to take the camera! the quality isn't great but you can see who it is!

That was all the people from the summer, we also bumped into an old friend in the supermarket when we got back, and I'm in correspondence with a couple of other people who i have lost contact with too, but i will write more about them in a later blog.

A while ago Mom was contacted by a distant relative who was researching her fathers side of her family tree, the chaps name was Andrew Loudon and he provided us with a family tree of the Loudon side of Moms family, it was most interesting.

Anyway the other day i was talking with mom about this and said "do you think that there would be anything interesting in Grandma's side of the Family" (grandma being my mothers mother).

To which the reply was " No Not really she was from a small family in Leeds".

Well not to be put off by this i thought i would see what i could turn up, and BOY WAS SHE WRONG!!

With only minimal research material, one name to go on and a photograph i have in the space of a couple of weeks managed to map out my Grandmas family tree, found the names of my great grandfathers 5 brothers and sisters and over 30 of their offspring, and this is just the information up to 1901, i have more info back to 1830, to go back further i will have to go and check the parish records in Tadcaster, so the last lot of acquaintances are my long lost family tree on my mothers side, i will defiantly be keeping everyone up to date on how my research is going on this one, but for now I will finish here with a picture of the day we went on our boat trip in Florida, just because it was hot and sunny and at the moment here it is wet and horrible and the rain is beating on the window!

Catch you all later.