Today I spent the morning making a gingerbread house with two of my little cousins that I babysit pretty often. It was quite successful. I was very proud of them. <3
I remember when both of these girls were born, and I've been babysitting them for years. They are precious, sweet children of God, and I love them so much. Their dad is my first cousin; he's nineteen years older than me, and his wife thinks that is so weird that we're so far apart in age, but we're cousins. But that's the way my family is. My dad is the fifth of six siblings, and he was the last to have kids, so Ketcher and I are the youngest of the first cousins. Almost all of our cousins are married and have children--one of those kids is actually older than I am. My mom's side is a little more normal; she only has a brother and a sister. However, her brother has five kids, the youngest of which is a year older than Ketcher. Mom's younger sister just had her first baby a couple of weeks ago, so I'm not the youngest on that side of the family anymore! Plus, my mom has a couple of cousins she is close to, and their kids are around mine and Ketcher's ages, so that's about the closest we get to "best friend" type relationships between cousins.
The magnitude of cousins means we don't all get Christmas gifts, but we don't mind. Time spent with family is such a great gift in itself; we love spending holidays at my uncle's ranch or my cousin's house where the guys cook out on the grill and we gather and eat and talk for hours. My grandmother on my dad's side did do something very special for each of the first cousins. There are fourteen of us, and grandma made each of us a quilt. They are gorgeous, and I'll cherish mine forever and hopefully pass it on to my daughter.
What I'm trying to get at is this: family is important. But for some reason it seems that "family" typically refers to mother, father, brother, sister, maybe grandparents. And I believe aunts, uncles, and cousins are just as important. There is love there that I try not to take for granted. I know not everyone has as massive a family as I seem to. We're spread across the country: Washington, Nebraska, Ohio, Vermont, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and all over Texas. I want to appreciate each member of my extended family and remember the time I get to spend with them.
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