A Peek at our Summer Vacation

Every summer I look forward to packing up the kids and heading to Montreal for a reunion with my Mom's side of the family. This year, my Mom and my brothers Chris and Howard flew together to Toronto to visit us for a week, then made the drive to Montreal with me. Here we are at the party.
My grandparents had 11 children and I still find it amazing that there are only 15 grandchildren. Here are the nine of us that were there that day. Isabel, second from the left, traveled all the way from Texas. Isabel's two sisters, our Austrian twin cousins and our two youngest cousins are the only ones missing.
Eight of my grandparent's children are still living, and here are seven of them. Uncle Roy lives in Montreal, but unfortunately was taking cousin Theresa to the train station that day and didn't make it here for photos. Oldest to youngest (left to right) are Hilary, Ilma, Romie, Mannie, Julian, Juliet and Marion.
The gang's all here! This is the group of us at Ian and Ann's cottage that afternoon. Almost all of us are my grandparents' descendants, along with spouses and my cousin Zandra and her husband. We all took so many photos that day, but this one holds a ton of meaning. I hope there are even more of us next year!

We had a fantastic day and the rain held out until well after dinner. Overall, we were in Montreal for almost a week and enjoyed visiting with everyone. Each generation had a chance to spend time together as well as with the elders and youngsters. Chris spent a day with Theresa learning some long-held family culinary secrets, so I'm looking forward to seeing him whip up some traditional Guyanese dishes for our next reunion! :-}

My Mom's cousin Georgie from Connecticut and his daughter Lisa and hubby Greg spent a few days with us, and while they were gone before the reunion day, their ukulele playing inspired so many of us to break out in song! The kids always love a day at the pool, and they even talked my brothers and I into the water for some volleyball games (which - of course - the kids won!)

You can probably tell from the photos that this trip is always special and it means so much to spend time with my Mom's family every summer. I'm working on a slide show of photos of the trip, so stay tuned for that shortly!

I hope you are having a great summer too!