We have a big family that just got a little bit bigger today.  I don’t mean that we had any new babies entering the world or anything like that.  Today, I got to meet an aunt that none of us even knew existed. 

About a month ago my dad got a letter in the mail, suggesting that he had another sister.  As my grandma has been gone for several years now, we can’t just ask if this is true.  Being the only boy in a family of five children, I am sure daddy would have opted for a new brother!  Ironically, my Aunt Sara was on her way to Florida for a vacation, when she realized that this stranger – who may be family – lived only 30 miles from where they were vacationing.  Naturally, Aunt Sara decided to take a detour to check her out.

First Impressions… 

Upon returning home, Aunt Sara told us how much this lady resembled my grandma.  My grandma used to knit, crochet, and quilt and this woman has the same passions.  Grandma was also an avid bird watcher.  AND this lady has her sewing machine set up so that she can look out the window to watch the birds.

This is getting a little weird.  

Still that isn’t really proof that she is a long lost sibling.  In order to be sure, Aunt Sara and daddy both took a 23andMe DNA test.  Low and behold, she is definitely related and most likely a sibling.  Wow.           

Aunt Pam was adopted as an infant and for most of her life, never knew her biological family.      

Welcome Aunt Pam and Uncle Rudy!

Consequently Pam and her husband Rudy made the trek north to visit all of us.  Aunt Sara and Uncle Jimmy called the entire family to come out for an impromptu reunion in order to meet our new Aunt Pam and Uncle Rudy.  I hope we didn’t overwhelm them!  One of the sisters couldn’t make it into town for the party but everybody else did.  And Pam finally got to meet all of the sisters and brother that she never knew she had… Along with their husbands and wife, and children, spouses, and grandchildren… Including the newest two month old grandbaby.  It was a packed house!  

We bombarded them both with questions and we had family trees drawn out to see where we all landed.  Rudy had spent years doing research and brought with him a stack of documents and lineage charts.  This was pretty fascinating to see historical documents from decades back and to realize that what we are looking at is our ancestral lineage.  This makes me want to do a little digging to build out the rest of our family tree… Perhaps this will be a later project.

Raised as an only child, Aunt Pam found she had a bigger family than she can possibly absorb in a single day.  All in all we had a great time visiting, eating way too much yummy food, and learning about our long lost aunt that we never knew we had. Our family has been blessed and we are now a little bit larger.

I am so glad that I got to meet them both!