USA Trip (12th Sep - 8th Oct) - Day 8 - Reunion

The Family Reunion was really the main reason we had booked to go over to the USA in the first place.

I've discussed this side of the family previously in the blog, but essentially my Grandfather had been deployed to England in 1954 and met my Grandmother at the Upper Heyford Airbase. It was a one night fling after a dance and he was redeployed to Germany shortly after. He never knew he had a child and my Father never knew his grandfather. Through the miracles of DNA testing and a lot of hardwork by Kristine and myself, we managed to track him down and get in touch with the family and my Dad and Stepmum went to the USA in 2015 and were welcomed by the family.

We visited in 2016, 2017 and 2018 while we were over in Sweden. 

The purpose of this trip was to catch up with family again and also to introduce my sister and nephew to the family. Initially it was planned that just Kris, the kids and I went over and we were going to stop past and visit the family, but then it grew from there. Tara and Brett had never met the American side of the family so we invited them along, then Dad decided he wanted to visit also and my stepmum Jo also booked to come along. What was originally planned to just be a small catch up then grew legs of its own. My Uncle Mark had a property on Hubbard Lake and offered to host the family for a full reunion. Several of the other branches of the family from around the United States also booked to come along and we ended up with over 60 people present, many of which I had never met.

We had a chance to meet some of them for pre-catch up drinks and the rest on the Saturday for the reunion.

The kids immediately caught up with their cousins who they hadn't seen for 8 years (since Tomas was 10, Cameron 11 and Alana 12).

Mark's property was amazing, it was home to deer and other wildlife, had a river running through the backyard and also had a reconstructed mine that held mining gear that Mark's grandfather had used. The mine had also been used in a movie, Wild Faith Christmas, that Mark had played a part in.

I'll put a few photos from the day below - overall it was a long day but a great chance to catch up with everyone and lots of promises to catch up again soon:

Cousins

The family

These side-by-sides were used to ferry people to the car-parking next door

The River

Playing Cornhole against Alana and Tara

A miner's hat owned by my great-grandfather

Flags for every country attendees came from

Mark starting the grand tour

The Mine

Cameron in the river

It was a great day and a huge thanks to Mark for hosting!

We headed off late in the afternoon for the 3hr drive back to our accommodation in Flint.