Leo Baker

The latest Crowl family member has arrived.

On 16th July, (four months after his mother's birthday), Leo te Paenga Baker came into the world - a bit early: he was supposed to cook for another six weeks originally. He's doing fine, however, and was hopefully going to be getting out of the incubator today. He was born by caesarian section after nothing would induce him to move...

Libby's waters broke at 32 weeks, but the doctors managed to maintain things for another ten days or so.

His father is Nathan Baker, and his mother is our third daughter, Libby. They live in Auckland these days, so we won't be catching up with him for a few weeks yet.

Sorry about the fuzzy photo - it was taken on a cellphone.

3.6.09 - it now turns out that the spelling of Leo's name should be: te Painga. This is the original spelling of the family name, so it's been corrected.

The emails keep coming

Even though this blog may have had a bit of a hiatus, the emails from people connected to the family keep coming. I received one from Mark Hannagan's daughter, Rebecca, back in February, and one from Adele McKersey in late May.
Adele wrote:
I have been in contact with Colleen O'Rourke who I discovered had a match to my Grandfather Charles John Francis Hannagan. Today I received an impressive lot of certificates from which she kindly sent to me in the UK related to relevant marriages of my family and also the address of your blogspot.

I was looking at the family tree as there is a lot I don't know about my my Mother's family.I noticed you don't have my brother Kevin who is two years younger than me on your tree and also a lot of the next generation. If you are interested I can send you the missing names .. just let me know.

I've written to Adele to say Yes, I'd love to hear some more about this part of the family. Her mother was a Hazel Hannagan, who was the daughter of Charles Hannagan Snr (as opposed to my grandfather, who was also a Charles Hannagan). Her grandfather was Francis Hannagan, who was born in Ireland, in 1825. And he's the son of a William Hannagan, whose birth year we're not sure of, but it must be sometime around the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The family on this side is rather complicated - Francis had two wives, and Charles appears to have had three - with children all over the place from these unions. No wonder there are so many Hannagans!

Getting up and running again

It's been a very long time since I added anything on here - things have been rather busy around here, alongside some health issues - see below.

Last night I went to a family gathering, so I thought it was time to get the emails and the blog up and running again.

The gathering was a double birthday celebration: Peter Hannagan is forty, and his big sister, Denise, is fifty in about three weeks. All the Jack and Daphne Hannagan family were there, along with some of the teenage and older kids, and a bunch of friends. Great meal at the Etrusco (the former Savoy Restaurant, for those who might remember it). Instead of taking individual orders, they did it in the same way that Chinese restaurants do: bringing out platter after platter until everyone was well and truly full.

Peter doesn't at all look like a 40-year-old...mid-twenties, perhaps, but certainly not 40. And neither does Denise look her age. It's a strange world where people don't look old anymore when they should. It's the last week Peter and Rachel and their family will be in Dunedin. They've been back home for some six months, and believe it or not, this is the first time I've managed to catch up with them.

The first months of this year were unusual: I had a prostate op in late February after a very unpleasant time running up to it. Thankfully, I've come through this very well, and am feeling much more like my usual self. Right on top of this, almost, I began doing a paper at Varsity while (almost) simultaneously taking part in a play which, due to its short rehearsal period, required me to be out at least three nights a week and often one afternoon on the weekend. Juggling Varsity and the play proved to be a bit of an exercise, but turned out to be doable!

And, for those who haven't heard, Celia got knocked off her motor scooter about three weeks ago. It was a dark, rainy night; she was riding along fairly slowly because of the conditions, and a car came out of nowhere, it seemed, and apparently turned into her. She was somersaulted off her bike, and slid along the road some way. Thank God there were no broken bones, and she's healing up well (there were lots of bruises, of course, and her right knee is still very sore). She's more niggled that the demolition job she'd started on the kitchen the weekend before has had to be put on slow...

Strangely, I was driving to rehearsal that evening, and passed a police car, ambulance and tow truck. As you do, I wondered what had happened, and who might be the 'victim,' never guessing that it was Celia. It was only when I got further down the hill that I got a cellphone call from my son to say that Celia had had an accident...and of course, it all lined up.

Celia wasn't able to be at the dinner last night: my number three daughter is expecting her number three, and is at 32 weeks. However, the waters broke yesterday, and so she's in hospital while they play a wait and see game. The baby's okay, but obviously they have to be cautious about what happens next. Appreciate your prayers!