2009..a year to remember!

I will certainly not forget last year in a hurry, as well as being a rather good year for us all there were a couple of things that made it very special indeed

Firstly, it was our Ruby wedding anniversary in April and we decided that as this was such a special event we would choose a very special cruise in order to celebrate it. We started off with five days in LA which was brilliant, we thoroughly enjoyed doing all the touristy things..hard to choose my most favourite but the Paul Getty museum was pretty amazing. Then there was a two week cruise to Hawaii...not quite the weather we had hoped for but totally wonderful and romantic! Paul had arranged lots of exciting treats that kept popping up throughout the cruise, it really was an absolute treat. Although I was a blubbering wreck when a bouquet from all our children was delivered to the cabin! We looked so young in 1969 at the beginning of what has so far been a very happy and exciting adventure. In 2009 we certainly look older but I still think we scrub up okay, even if Paul's dicky bow is wonky!

Holidays do feature rather prominently since we both retired and we managed a couple of breaks in the UK as well as two cruises this year! It was good to take my Mum to Northumberland in July. Our trips out had to be planned according to mobility scooter access, sometimes a little limiting but mostly we managed to find some nice places..occasionally being thwarted when the pavement suddenly came to an end with a steep step and no slope

Paul seems to take countless back views of Mum and me when we're on holiday together...I suppose that's his usual view of us!

We have just started thinking about where to take Mum this year and think that perhaps Norfolk again will be a good idea. If we can get the same chalet as before on the edge of the river there will be plenty to sit and enjoy without having to go out every day.

Towards the end of the summer Paul and I had a week at a wonderful Watermill which belongs to a couple we met on holiday the year before. It has been converted into holiday flats and is a superb place to stay, nestling in a remote valley in Pembrokeshire

We had such a relaxing week and it was so good to spend time with such lovely people and enjoy their hospitality, sadly the weather wasn't good enough for us to take up their invitation of a glass of wine in their hot tub which sits high up on the hillside behind the mill! Rough sea also put paid to our trip to Ramsey Island for a spot of birdwatching.



One of the most memorable events of the year came about as a result of at last being persuaded to research my family history. Since Paul retired five years ago he has spent many hours working on his and has found a whole raft of old relatives. I always felt rather reluctant to start poking around, particularly in my father's family as my parents separated when I was 8 months old and from then on we lived with my maternal grandparents and I knew little about the other side of my family. However, once I started I was totally hooked it was so absorbing and within a few hours I was becoming acquainted with my great, great, great grandfather from 1783...this felt very strange as I'd not known my own father.

My father was a widower with two very young children when he met my Mum, she looked after them when they got married so I had always known that I had a half brother and sister but had never met them. I made contact with my father's sister which thrilled my Mum as they were best friends when they were sisters-in-law, it was lovely to chat with my aunt and she was able to fill in a lot of blanks for me. Having gotten into the swing of this ancestry lark the obvious next step was to try and trace my half sister (her brother had died a couple of years ago) and at last I felt ready to do it. It only took a very little sluething to find her address and contact her... two months ago we met for the first time in 61 years! It has knocked us both for six but we feel that if we take it slowly we will be able to forge a proper relationship, she is lovely and I liked her instantly...we look similar too and there seems a real connection between us. There have been long phone calls, lunch together and next week a meal out as a foursome with our husbands. I feel it's perhaps too soon to include a photo of us both just yet..but may do soon.

There has been knitting during the year too...only socks completed though with one or two other projects either abandoned or still unfinished. Sometimes I feel I'm not really savvy enough for knitting patterns..only today my dear friend Mazzam had to gently suggest turning over the page of the pattern book to find charted instructions for the fancy bit of cable for which I swore there were no instructions..doh!