She Found Her Lobster!

My cousin Carol Ann is one amazing person. We didn't spend a lot of time together when we were kids, but discovered each other as young adults and a beautiful friendship grew from that.

I've always admired Carol Ann's ability to take on challenges with great determination. She headed back to school in her mid 20's to get a degree and become a teacher. After graduating, she headed off to South Korea for her first teaching adventure. I always loved hearing about her new life and thought it sounded pretty exotic and she was pretty brave to venture out on her own like that.

After South Korea, she moved to Kuwait. It was during her time here that we started talking about traveling together. She was going to Egypt on her spring break and it had always been on my travel bucket list. I seriously considered joining her, but in the end, I decided to go back to school myself and needed that money for tuition, books, etc.

We didn't give up on the idea of traveling together and did a few small trips when she was home in Canada. We did a weekend jaunt to Cleveland to do Cedar Point, shopping and take in The Beach Boys concert. When there was a Titanic exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum, we took off for the weekend to check it out (and do some shopping). We traveled well together and fun getting to know each other as cousins and as friends.

In 2012 she invited me to join her in Paris for Christmas. Wow, what an invitation! And when would I ever have that opportunity again!?! It took some thoughtful consideration on my part as it would be my very first Christmas away from home. In the end, I did it and I'm so glad I did. We met in Paris and spent about a week casually wandering the Christmas markets and sampling the amazing French cuisine. We squeezed in the essentials like The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre and Notre Dame on Christmas Eve but it was a very relaxed and comfortable trip that we both enjoyed immensely. We didn't have an agenda so everything we did was perfect!

For a long time, Carol Ann and I were perpetually single at all the Murray family functions. Grammie would joke that there needed to be a war so we could meet a soldier like her. LOL. She was very happy for me when I met Devin and Cody and enjoyed getting to know them on visits here and when we visited her parents in Nova Scotia. And one day, about 2 years ago, I got a message "I met someone". I had questions and her answers were pretty exciting. I thought "I think she's going to marry this guy". Today, she did. 

My adventurous "fruzzin" as I like to call her (friend/cousin) lives in Qatar and married a British man, so, in the middle of a pandemic they had a ZOOM wedding. They will have celebrations in England and Canada in time but today we celebrated online.

I'm so thrilled that this wonderful woman has met her match. Someone that appreciates her humour, enjoys reading & photography as much as her and is also a globe-trotting adventure-seeker! For all the Friends lovers out there, Phoebe put it so well when she explained that lobsters mate for life and Carol Ann has found her "lobster".