Wow! What a Great Mulvey/Farrell Family Reunion

The family reunion was a great success. We had 15 family members participate in the Friday golf scramble. The winners were Nelson Wixson (son-in-law of Joe Mulvey), Chip Mulvey (son of Frank - deceased), Shannon Mulvey (son of Thomas J.), and Thomas Mulvey (son of James Sr.). We had around 85 relatives at the Friday evening reception. Everyone seemed to have a good time and most didn't leave until the well went dry. Renewing old acquintances and meeting new family members was exciting. Although I hadn't seen many of my relatives in over 35 years, it only seemd like yesterday, once we got to talking about old times. Everyone was given a family reunion t-shirt. The full day session on Saturday was great. We enjoyed a power point presentation by Eileen Falcone on the family history, with a good amount of input from the audience. Ann, Bernadette, Liz and Mary were in fine form and sang (on many occasions over the weekend) our theme song "Lovely Leitrim". We couldn't get enough of their sweet voices and I can still hear the song in my head. In addition, they provided a wonderful and informative panel discussion on growing up in Ballinwing. Bill Doutney proved to be a wealth of information on the Farrell's and James "The Great" Mulvey's visits to America and his and Bridie's visits to some local breeding farms. Mary Ann (Mulvey) & Jim Merrill's son Jim Jr. used the occasion to get married in Raleigh on Friday. He and his new bride Loi were introduced and shared a cake with the family. My late brother Frank and Julia's son Rickey announced that his daughter Kristen and boyfriend Berto were just engaged. Everyone present on Saturday received a Mulvey/Farrell Family Reunion Certificate of Attendance. We had 95 people for lunch and 101 people for dinner. On Sunday we had 60 people stay around for the cook-out at Joe & Marianne's house. We are talking about doing a family reunion in Leitrim in 2011. We have passed the flag to organize this to our beautify Irish Cousins. More on this in future postings. Words can not capture the joy, love, and family spirit present at the reunion. I know that Marianne and I enjoyed meeting with our lovely family. Whatever work went into organizing the reunion was worth every minute. God Bless All! Joe