Week 2 -- Meeting New Family Members and Skyping

If your family is like ours, the lines of relationship aren't always perfectly drawn. But all of that doesn't really matter -- we welcome all into our large clan and our motto is "the more the merrier". And, I'm grateful for others that welcome us through crooked and dotted lines as well.

Last Sunday, January 9th, John and I, along with Danny and his kids, drove down to Oceanside so that Danny and John could help our nephew, Ben Lake, bless (christen) his little baby boy Lennox.

I was happy to meet several new members of the family. One of my new friends and family members, is Ben's girlfriend, Ingrid Rutan. Ben and Ingrid, who live and work in Bangor, Maine, were in Southern California visiting Ben's Dad, Frank Lake. Frank was married to John's late sister Debbie for many years before they divorced back in the mid-90's. Frank has been remarried about 11 years and I finally got to meet his wife Cheryl. Even though we're the family of her husband's former wife, she treated us like old friends and part of her own family; she was so kind and friendly to us. I made a sincerely good and new friend in both her and her great and friendly parents from Thousand Oaks.

I like to consider myself fairly up to date with technology; after all, I AM writing a blog. But, I've never had the chance to see anyone Skype, much less do it myself. (Like a lot of folks, I'm really not one who loves talking on the phone so the chance to feel self conscious in front of a camera while on the phone hasn't made me an early adopter on this bit of tech.) But, I love my neice Christine Mosby and her family who live way out in Atlanta. With Skype, it was really fun to sit and have a talk with her and her four sweet kids (OK, so the baby is just 6 months old, but it was fun to watch her crawl and wiggle around,)

This is what I looked like on the Mosby's computer screen....

So, now I feel like I've bonded with some of my grand-nieces and nephews too -- thanks to my first Skyping experience.

Somehow it made me think of the old movie "2001 A Space Odyssey (by Stanley Kubrick). So, really I hated that movie and remember trying to force myself to fall asleep during it at a drive in theater back when it was new. But, one scene I do remember was people talking to each other on video phones.

So Skyping is a bit deja vu from that horrendous movie. (As an aside, one of my other all-time most hated movies was also by Stanley Kubrick, A-I! Oh kill me now rather than make me sit through either of these movies again. (I think Hollywood has a case of the "Emporers New Clothes" with all the artsy hot shots gushing over Kubrick's skill and artistry as a director -- get real -- his films are just long, boring and weird.)

OK, so back to family, new friends and Skyping. I really look forward to getting to know Lennox, Ingrid and Cheryl better. Thanks to the bad weather on the East Coast, Ben and Ingrid haven't been able to fly back home to Maine, so, with the blessing of both their families, they had an extra day or two to drive up to Vegas on Thursday night and get married. So now I can officially welcome Ingrid to the family!