A Story of Someone- 6/21

I've been going back and forth on which photo to post for today's Story of Someone (which is also why I'm late in posting it), before I've decided to just go ahead and post two.

The first photo is of my father's first cousin (once removed), Paul. He and his wife, Annette, run a beautiful hotel just outside of Killarney, in Fossa. Molly and I spent a heavenly night last night there last night (well, technically a week and a night ago since I'm behind in posting this, but you get the idea) and got to meet Paul after breakfast today.

I've always been curious about our family's ancestry and I've been put in touch with people here and there who have shared information with me. I've also been able to find information online as well through Ancestry.com but I tend to get lazy with following through on piecing it all together and am left with bits and pieces everywhere. It feels very unfinished. So when Paul said "I promise I won't bore you to tears, but I have something I want to show you", I never imagined that he'd roll out nearly four feet of ancestry information on the Corridan family that he's painstainkingly put together based on research his own father did, that he's continued since his death. I could have been less bored looking through this. In fact, I felt invigorated at knowing there was so much information in one place that I could look to as try and put our family tree together on Ancestry.com.

Paul took some time to point things out to me and Molly. And he explained that the reason there are so many of the same names is because the first male child is typically named after their own father. And then the second child is typically named after the mother's father. If, the original oldest child dies then another child may be born with their own father's name. In the Corridan clan, there are too many Thomas's to count! But Paul's explanation helped me to understand why this is the case.

Meeting Paul was such a pleasure of this trip. And getting my hands on so much ancestry information has me very excited to try again to put the pieces together. I'm already looking forward to when I get to reconnect with Paul and my Irish Corridan family again!

Next up is my second A Story of Someone photo for the day.

Traveling through Ireland with Molly for the past week has been such a heartwarming, fun, comfortable and funny experience- one I'll treasure forever. I have loved getting to see Ireland through her eyes and for her to be in this country I love so much and to meet these people who have come to mean so much to me. She fit right in and was a wonderful travel companion- not to mention a fantastic co-pilot and navigator.

This photo was taken at Kelly's Bar in Cobh, where we shared our very last Guinness (of this trip). I love this photo because it captures the smiles we both had plastered to our faces for our Irish adventure together and it shows just how much Molly fit in among the tweed hats, the pints of Guinness and the Irish hospitality. Because of train schedules and such, we had this pint before noon and I laugh at the memory of us walking outside, being blinded by the sunshine and looking over at each other as we both confessed that we felt a little tipsy from our morning pint. It was a perfect end to a perfect adventure.

Check out Cyrena and Sarah's photos below: