~Brotherly Love~

My family and I had a chance to go to North Carolina over the Thanksgiving holiday. We had a wonderful visit with both family in Raleigh and in Morganton. While in Raleigh we were able to attend and take part in a traditional family fish fry. It was great to be around a large group of family and catch up on all that has transpired since our last visit 7 years ago.

As those of you that are close to me know, I am not good at keeping in touch. I am dissapointed in myself as I think about my family and extended family often, but fail to reach out. Not to mention that the Family, outside of the teachings of Christ, is the most critical and emphasized principle in the teachings of my church!

I didn't have a lot, well any, extended family around me when I was growing up in San Diego. Most of Mom's side of the family live in the East and my Dad's family members are in Finland. Dad was raised in a town called Ekenas (Swedish)/Tammisaari (Finnish). During my childhood I spend 2 to 3 weeks in NC in the summer and got out to Finland to see my Grandma and Cousins every few years.

So here is some background on me and my family. I was adopted as a baby within my family. My biological Mother, Sheila, was thoughtful enough to allow my parents to adopt me. Sheila was very young when she became pregnant with me and my Mom, Charlotte, could not have children due to biological reasons; therefore, the situation worked out well for both sides. Sheila is my Mom's neice, the daughter of my Mom's sister Ruth. I have two "full" biological brothers from Sheila and Lee Redwine, Dean and Shane. I found out about my brothers many years ago; however, we did not meet in person until the year 2000. Our first meeting was very emotional and still seems a bit like a dream to me.

Even though I have not been raised with my Brothers and most likely have not experienced the bond that I'm sure Dean and Shane share, I immediatlely found something special in each of my brothers when we met. I was raised by a wonderful, supportive and loving set of parents; however, I never got the opportunity to experience life with siblings. I don't regret how I was raised, but I do have a special place in my heart for my relatively newly developed relationship with my brothers.




I see a lot of myself in both Dean and Shane. Dean and I are closer in age and he and his wife Jennifer recently had their 3rd little girl. Their other two girls, Kaylee and Allison, are cute and loving. Kaylee and Savannah are nearly the same age and really hit it off while we visited. I bought the three of them My Little Pony's to play with while we were there, which seemed to have been a good choice :)

I was so happy for Savannh to get to experience the same bonding and fun that I experienced as a child visiting my cousins. I have so many great memories of playing with Joey, Jennifer and Jamie, my Aunt Linda's kids. We would spend a lot of time at my Aunt Jean and James house. I love the following pictures because I have so many great memories running through this yard as a kid.





While we visited Dean and Jennifer's house, it was great to see Shane and his girlfriend playing with the kids for several hours. They went from the swingset, to getting buried in leaves, to kicking a ball, to playing tag...it was fun to watch.

Even though it has been 7 years since my brothers and I first met, I still feel as though I am in a dream state. There is so much to say and so much to try and catch up on. We only had a week of vacation, half of which was spent in Raleigh and in travel. Needless to say, I wish that we lived closer to my brothers. It would be nice to have the chance to hang out and bbq on the weekends together.

Here are the Dad's with their sweet neices:

I Love having family and hope to do a better job of keeping in touch and expressing my Love for my extended family. There are of course a multitude of other family members that we spent time with and thoroughly enjoyed being with. I always risk hurting someone's feelings by not including them by name...but after all, this is my Blog :)