I originally was planning a get together with my second cousins on my mom's side in the summer. I thought it would be nice to just hang out at the beach and let the young kids play outside. The whole idea is to meet outside of weddings and funerals. Then we get a chance to talk. I found out my sister was going to be in town in October. I decided to postpone the get together till October. I thought it would be nice for her to meet with the cousins as well.
A few weeks ago I mentioned to my mom that I was thinking of doing a family tree for the get together. She thought that was a great idea. I was thinking it would be easy to just put the names and pictures of people and that was it. It was more complicated than I expected. My mom's relatives have a Chinese name and a Vietnamese name. First she wanted to put their Vietnamese names. Then she was thinking of using their Chinese names. Both was difficult because it was about translating into English. Finally my mom decided to use their English name, if they had one. I am really lucky that my mom knows most of her aunts and uncles names.
The family tree is on one of our walls. The other challenge is to make sure we had enough space to put everyone's name. My Grandmother from my mom's side had 10 siblings. Some siblings didn't get married and didn't have any children. Two siblings got married, divorced and is remarried. The ones that had children had 4-6 kids. Those kids now have kids and some of those kids have kids. I tried to include some pictures to make it more interesting. Some cousins sent me recent family photos. Other cousins I just found some pictures on Facebook. Luckily I had space for everyone. Luckily some of my cousins are on Facebook. It made it easier to connect with them.
I think most of my cousins enjoyed learning about their family history. Some cousins didn't know how we are related. But since they saw the tree, they know now! I know most of the significant others didn't know about the linage. It is overwhelming and can be hard to digest.
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