
Cousins
I have a million posts swirling around in my head but I literally had no time this week to sit down and write them, it was a crazy week. I actually wrote down all of the potential titles so I wouldn’t forget to share the awesome they will surely be.
Today though I have to write about family because my weekend has been all about family. Extended and immediate and it’s been a roller coaster ride I couldn’t pass up sharing.
First of all, Friday we had date night which was AWESOME. We never have date night, we just don’t have time and this date night was even more awesome because we went with my brother and sister-in-law who we don’t spend nearly enough time with. Last week was my brother’s birthday (thus the Rapture didn’t happen because I then had to decide what to get him for his birthday send Joe out to find him something he would love, because he is very hard to buy for and God has a sense of humor). Anyway, we stayed super late because the kids were having a blast and despite our living like 3 miles away they don’t see enough of each other for various reasons. We decided to make a serious effort to rectify that and made plans for date night on Friday. We had so much fun, we were going to go to the movie but it was sold out and I have to say, as much fun as the movie would have been, I am so glad because having a nice dinner, and then just sitting around having a couple of drinks, catching up was way more fulfilling for me. It gave us the chance to catch up which I know it seems ridiculous that we would need to do that, but quite honestly we just never see each other! I didn’t want the night to end and I hope we can find the time to have more nights like it!
Saturday we had our first of two graduation parties to attend. My baby cousins graduated this weekend. I am the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family by 18 months followed by my brother and then there’s a serious gap before my next cousins. Obviously there’s an even bigger gap between my brother and I and the cousins that graduated this weekend. I was 15 when the first was born and that was so much fun!! While I sometimes envy my kids being so close in age to their cousins that they are friends, I wouldn’t trade getting to be the “big cousin” and babysit and watch my youngest cousins grow in to the fabulous people they are now. I would be lying if I didn’t say right up front that I envied them some. My dad’s two younger brothers had their kids about the same distance apart as my brother’s kids and mine are spaced. They are all very close. They are VERY different people, all four of them. You couldn’t find a more diverse group of four kids if you tried, but they are friends as well as family and that’s so awesome. I have cousins that I am close friends with, but they are second and third cousins, not first cousins. Outweighing the envy though is the fact that I was their first babysitter, and their biggest fan. The “generation gap” is huge but we make it work and we always have fun when we are all together because my brother and I aren’t yet old enough to be too gross for them to hang with (at least at family functions where they have no choice).
For all of the reasons above I guess, I got weepy on Saturday. So stupid I know, but I couldn’t help it. I was looking at graduation cards and though I’d had their gifts for a month and chosen them to be specific to each of them, the cards were a killer. I went with sap because I was feeling sappy (hopefully they’ll forgive me my need to be sappy).
At the first party my cousin and her best friend had their parties together and it was a lot of fun. They’ve been pretty much inseparable since they were young, so it was very fitting they have their parties together. When we got there, I was already choking back the tears from the card shopping and then there were these great signs out on the front lawn. On one side was a picture of each girl as a toddler/baby and on the other, their Senior pictures. I didn’t cry, but it was tough. What was interesting is my big, tough, rancher turned coal mine haul truck driver of an uncle didn’t hide his emotions. My cousin is a big time daddy’s girl. She spends Friday nights in watching movies with him. There is not room for a boyfriend in her life because they can’t measure up to her dad. This.is.awesome. It’s awesome because my aunt and uncle tried for years to have a baby and had a really rough time. I think they tried for about 9 years (which is unbelievable to me because after 3 years I was miserable and decided to stop trying for a second and it took them that long to have their first). In those 9 years they borrowed my brother and I a lot and we love them so much. So when my cousin came along on my grandpa’s birthday (nope, not planned) she was truly a miracle. To see who she is and to look ahead and see what she can and will become is something worthy of my tears that I struggled so hard to hold back all weekend. To say she’s a blessing to our entire family is just not enough. She’s our miracle and she’s amazing and I am so proud of her and was so proud to be a part of her celebration this weekend! She has grown in to a strong willed, independent, free spirit like her dad who is going off to Nebraska for college which will probably be really, really difficult for both she and her dad, but she will make so many memories and have so much fun!! Also? I love her because she is not like some girls her age who has to have a boyfriend to make her life complete. She went to her Senior Prom with a friend because she just never had much of an interest in having a steady boyfriend and when her date spent more time with his friends than he did with her, she dumped him at prom and went on with her night her way. She knows who she is and what she wants and I SO admire her for it!!
My brother and sister-in-law left a bit before we did from the party because they got there before us and Joey wanted to go home with them. So he went off with them and Elizabeth stayed behind because she’d made a new friend in my cousin’s, sister’s, much younger half sister. I know that’s a mouthful! She played with my nephew for quite a while and then discovered the other little girl and her doll house and that was that. Love at first sight. Later my grandma told me the other little girl can be pretty territorial because she is SO much younger than her siblings and tends to be a little spoiled. I don’t know if it’s a testament to my daughter, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, and they got along famously and played dolls for a long time. When we got ready to leave they hugged and promised to see one another at kindergarten in the Fall. I didn’t have the heart to tell them they wouldn’t, because Sis has a late birthday and just isn’t ready for kindergarten so she’s going to Junior K, while the other little girl just finished Junior K and is heading to kindergarten and they will be at different schools. I’m hoping to get my cousin to get me their contact information so they can maybe have some play dates over the Summer because Sis just loved her and she needs more friends that are all girl and like to do girly things with her, where she has just male cousins and spends a lot of time with siblings of Joey’s friends who for some reason are ALL boys! She has a few new friends from daycare that are girls and she will start Junior K in the Fall and meet some more girls her age I hope, but if I can find one she hits it off with that she can hang out with outside of daycare/preschool I am hogging that kid! Not kidding here when I say her Barbie dolls don’t treat each other the way mine did. They tend to spit and fight and get in to trouble a lot no matter how many times she watches her collection of Disney movies with girly princesses (and I totally can’t believe I just admitted that).
So after we left the party my sister-in-law had told Joe we should come to their house to hang out. Apparently Sis knew this because as soon as we were in the car she started asking if we were going to “Lucas’s house”. She asked every 3 seconds. Finally I said “we’re going to the looney bin” and my daughter without missing a beat said “after we’re done at the looney bin can we go to Lucas’s house?”. That’s my favorite part of the weekend and I am posting it here for posterity because it was just one of those funny things you have to remember when she’s older.
We spent quite a while at my brother’s house and then went to dinner all of us and while Sis wanted to ride with her aunt and uncle, apparently my kick-ass mini-van is cooler than their Tahoe so I got the other three. The trip from their house to the restaurant has to be my second favorite part of the weekend because my youngest nephew is an awesome story teller and when he says “Hey Aunt Steph” for the 100th time I still say “hey Luke, what?”. I love my titles. Mom, mommy, big fat meany, and “Hey Aunt Steph” which oddly is the title given to me by my older nephew years ago as well. To say Saturday will go down as one of my favorite days ever for so many reasons, is just a supreme understatement. Also? I came home a kid short because Joey went back out to my brother’s for the night. Total win for everyone because the weather was finally not crappy and my brother has acreage and a big shop for when the weather did get crappy again on Sunday and the boys played and played, Cabin Fever can suck it!
Then, then, this happened…

OUCH!
Sis was so tired she didn’t want to put her arms in to her jammies on Saturday night. She was on her knees on the couch and went to put her arms through the holes and the stupid too soft couch cushions bucked her off and she fell face first in to the coffee table. She scared me to death because she hit SO HARD and she screamed SO LOUD. Sis doesn’t cry. She’s all boy, she’s one big bruise all of the time so when she cries that hard it’s a big deal. I called my mom (the nurse) at 10:30 PM and rushed my exhausted, screaming, daughter to her house to rule out broken bones. We don’t think anything is broken but her nose is really running a lot so I think we’ll go to the pediatrician tomorrow just to rule out a problem with her sinus on that side. This is the “morning after” photo. It looks worse today and I’m sure will look even worse tomorrow and in the coming week. *sigh* Also? Her nose didn’t bleed, that’s a bruise under her left nostril. I thought it was bleeding at first too, but it’s not it’s a bruise.
As you can see in the picture at the top, it didn’t slow her down. The picture up there is all four kids at the second graduation party of the weekend. Which leads me to that party.
My other cousin who graduated had his party Sunday after graduation. It was a shorter party, but his slide show was on the TV so I again found myself fighting back tears (I kinda avoided the slide show at my other cousin’s graduation party because I was already weepy). They are all grown up!! And he? He has grown to be a person I admire and truthfully wish I could go back in time and see through the eyes of a kid his age because he my friends, is phenomenal.
He is a young man who puts his Faith at the center of everything he is and does. He spent his lunch hours at school preaching to any who would listen, he held morning prayer groups before school. He spent his free time volunteering to share his Faith with any who needed it, whether it be classmates, or others in the town. He spent Sundays preaching at his church or others, mentored by his own Pastor, and his Wednesdays at his church or another sharing his Faith with the other kids in the community. He’s been on mission trips volunteering not just his gift of public speaking and sharing God’s love, but offering his strong back to anyone who needed it. He eventually wants to enter Seminary and then come back home to bring his Faith with him with an emphasis on sharing it with youth who he feels can really benefit from it. He wants to save them all and I have to say, if anyone can, he can. They listen to him and look up to him and if you know teenagers, you know that it’s no small thing to have chosen to walk his path and not only to walk that path in and out of school but to be able to share his Faith with many because they truly like him and want to listen to him. I found myself yesterday looking back to my high school days and wondering if I could have done the same? I don’t think so. While I spent a lot of time with my Faith as a teenager, I did so while spending time with others who already shared in my Faith at my church, or with just myself and my family. He chose to share his Faith with hundreds of others his age, not knowing or caring how he would be received and I have to tell you, they received him well which I think is a testament to WHO he is. I personally can not wait to see who he will become in the next chapters of his life, but whoever it is, it will be who he wants to be and I can’t see that person being anything short of truly amazing.
My kids, especially Joey look up to their older cousins and I can’t think of better role models for them. There are still two left to graduate and they will be just as amazing and probably I will be just as weepy when their days come as I was on Saturday and Sunday.
Today for me has just been a day of reflection and fond memories, and quiet time with my own little family. To say I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at my own kids and seeing that they are growing WAY too fast, and realizing that one day soon I’ll be at THEIR graduation parties, along with those of my nephews and my niece, would be less than honest. I just hope that they can follow the lead of my cousins who they love, look up to, and admire and that we can be the type of parents my parents, aunts, and uncles have all been so that my children and my niece & nephews will become what my cousins, and my brother have become, which is strong willed, free spirited, loving, amazing, people with a world wide open to them and the ability to foster in the next generation (hopefully not before they’re ready where my cousins are concerned, whenever that may be, because I think they are both a ways away from that yet) of our family the same qualities my generation (no matter how spread out age wise we may be) has.
For me it’s been an amazing weekend and I just had to put it in to words on here so that I can always remember it, so this post is for me as much as it is for you. The only thing that would have made the weekend more complete would have been if my niece was here, but she doesn’t come for a few weeks yet. I hate that she misses so much of this side of her family, but she’ll be here soon for her too short visit and then I’ll get my time in with her as well.
Tags: Faith, Family, Graduation, Kids, Love