May newsletter competition winner revealed!

Last month we had a great Father’s day themed competition to ask people to send in a great Instagram image of something that celebrates MAN by Instagramming an image via #umifathersday (see here for the entries): http://umihotels.wpengine.com/umi-fathers-day Great entries, huh! Well, we have picked our winner! Congratulations @missymoo299, or rather Anna Warner, who sent us this great Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Y27o9Gp1Ty/ We were really touched by your story.

Anna told us her story here:
“I began my search on New year’s day 2010. The only information I knew was his name and place of birth – Cambridge, England and that he had a younger brother. I traced my uncle quite quickly. Fortunately for me, my ‘uncle’ still lived in Cambridge. I turned up on his doorstep unannounced, it was very emotional. He showed me lots of photos and confirmed that my dad had moved to Australia and had 6 other children. I had always wanted siblings (I’m an only child) and now I have 6! It appeared that my eldest sister worked for a radio station in Western Australia, and by luck I found her on Facebook. Now for the difficult part, what do I say? I decided to assume she had no knowledge of me so I wrote…’I think you are my half-sister’. The following day a message in my inbox read ‘we have always known about you but not known enough to contact you’… ‘I have called dad and told him and he is overjoyed you have made contact with us after all these years’. WOW, they all knew about me. This was the start of February and by the 14th Feb I had booked flights for our most amazing trip ever.
The journey was a long one but well worth the wait, my dad travelled to meet us and it was an incredible reunion; I was immediately treated as one of the family. I am so lucky to have found my father and my siblings after 38 years of not knowing, and secretly wishing I did. Three years later we talk often online and my dad texts me regularly – I would love to go again, it was a dream come true. Australia turned out to be a beautiful backdrop for a perfect family reunion.”

Well, we’re so happy for you, Anna! Thank you for sharing this great story with us. We hope you put the Grillslinger to good use!