I Am Back - part 2

During my procrastination time when I should/could be working on the BAO book I research my family's history, so many records are coming online the research is really starting to come together...it is quite addictive, just a big jigsaw puzzle that you never quite finish. Recently after many stumbling blocks I have finally made connections with Irish cousins in County Cork Ireland they are from my gg grandmother Abigail Conners and gg grandfathers James Shea's line. I have spoken via skype to a cousin on the O'Conners side now living in the US...Patrick has been extremely helpful putting me in contact with cousins still residing in the villages my gg grandparents lived.  I had a great chat to two very lovely quintessential Irish gentleman cousins Jim and Patrick via skype which was a delight, although I did have trouble understanding the lilting irish brogue and they possibly had trouble with my Australian strine.  The upshot of this is that we are organising a family reunion in October 2014 and hopefully a few rellies in Australia will be able to make the trip to county Cork Ireland for the clan gathering.

Also genealogy and BAO did a bit of crossover.  One of the BAO artists Robyn, posted images of some old photos on her blog that were left in a house in Queensland.

Elsie May Baills

I decided armed with just the name of the young girl, Elsie May Baills and her date of death in Queensland to do a bit of research and find out more about this little girl and her family. Whether my research had anything to do with Robyn making contact with a descendant of little Elsie May's brother I am not sure, but it was lovely to hear that the photos had been reunited with a descendant who was very elated to receive them.  It is amazing the information that is out there in the virtual world, so if by some chance you do come across old photos please don't turf them out...it is very possible these days with the internet to return them to a grateful descendant who is interested in family research.

For 3 weeks in August my daughter who had been on an internship in LA, visited here before her return to Australia via LA, UK and Greece, a very well travelled young lady, half my age and been to way more places/countries than I have.  It was really lovely to catch up with her and hear about all her LA experiences.  The internet is fabulous thing and I would be bereft without it but you really are on call 24/7, especially in an industry like the film business.  So although Eva was here for 3 weeks much time was taken up with various projects and skype meetings.  However it was still lovely to have her around.

In between her work she did hang with Henry,

we went for walks, 

took a drive to Siglufjorður 

and had a lovely swim at Hófsos.

I did mean to post this a week or so ago but have ended up quite busy...more on that next time.

At the moment I am sitting in a London Gatwick hotel waiting for my flight to Australia, where over a two week period I will be able to catch up with all my children in Melbourne. However this means I am procrastinating my BAO book a little more.