Hi, its great to see you here again!

I recently made a trip back to New Zealand to visit my sister, and reconnect with extended family members. My mother came from a family of 6 living brothers and sisters (2 others had died as children). So there were lots of cousins.

We grew up living in a town near to two of these families.

One family lived in Oamaru and the other in Dunedin and we lived not too far from either of these cities. This meant that vacation times were spent visiting one or the other. Consequently, in a sense my sister and I grew up with our cousins from both of these families.

Once we grew up, we all scattered across the world.
Then we became young adults and started to leave our homes. One cousin married a sea captain. Her brothers followed her husband’s example which resulted in them being scattered across the world. Others went over to Australia as many kiwi youngsters do, looking for greater opportunities.

And me – well I ended up in Mexico and now the USA. Of course this resulted in not having met up with any of these relatives for many years. More years than I care to count.

Plans to reconnect with extended family
A few weeks before I was due to leave for New Zealand, my sister sent me a DM on Twitter. She said “we can do a 2-3 day trip while you are here, where would you like to go?”.

I did not have to think twice, and immediately sent a reply: “Motueka to see our Aunt and cousins (the one who used to live in Dunedin)”. This aunt is a younger sister to our mother.

The years had flown by.
I had not seen her since our mother’s funeral which is now about 18 years ago now. There was some contact via phone and email across the years, but then after her husband died she moved across town and changed internet providers which resulted in a different email address. So emails sent to her were bouncing back.

Once Sandie and I had caught up with each other somewhat, we picked up the phone and called our Motueka Aunt. It was great to talk with her and she was thrilled to learn that we were planning a visit. Our cousin has a home in Kaiteriteri which is just over the hill from Motueka.

Tehiwi
When Val and Mike bought their home in Kaiteriteri it had a huge garage with a million dollar view. They quickly turned that part of the garage into a lovely apartment which they rent out to tourists.

(They named the apartment Tehiwi). We were offered the use of this apartment for the duration of our stay. What a luxury! A beautiful apartment with a million dollar view.

An aside: this is one part of New Zealand that many overseas tourists don’t get to see. If you are planning a trip to New Zealand, I highly recommend you check out! http://www.tehiwi.co.nz

Our family (even extended family) is a part of who we are.
It was so good to catch up with our aunt who is now 82 years old and looks somewhere around 70 maybe.

She is so well (and attributes that to organic food and vitamins), and takes no medication at all! I certainly am following her footsteps.

One fantastic guide to right eating I have found is a free report called “No Pain”.

One of the first things we did after greeting our aunt was to check the photos on the fridge. Some of our cousins we recognized (one is the spitting image of his father), and others we did not. Two of the boys were at sea, one lives in England and Val and Mike were off on a bicycle tour in Samoa.

Then to our delight we discovered that another cousin (from the Oamaru family) lives near Motueka. Of course we looked her up also.

How good it is to reconnect with all family members.

Perhaps you have never left the area where your family lives, so have always been close. Take time to let them know how much you appreciate them. We are all on this planet for but a fleeting moment.

Perhaps you too have family scattered across the country or even across the world. Make the effort to reconnect. It is well worth it, and it will add a new dimension to your life.

May All Your Relationships be Successful!