This picture is over a decade old and I think my cousin K was taking it. Five of the eight cousins in this picture are married now. Four other cousins are not pictured here because they are either young or weren’t even born yet.
All these wonderful people are from my mom’s side of the family. My grandmother had 5 children – 4 girls and 1 boy. My mom is the oldest of the siblings. Each of the siblings, except for my uncle, had 2 children each. My mom had my brother and I. Two of my aunts had two boys each and the youngest aunt had one boy and one girl. My uncle has 3 girls and 1 boy – the sole carrier of the family name.
I give a lot of credit to my mom and my aunts for keeping us, cousins, close. I remember flying off to Florida and spending the entire summer with my cousins, D & J. They used to come over to Seattle in the other summers. Two of my cousins lived in Korea for a big part of their lives, but I still saw them quite frequently. My youngest cousins I got to know much more while I was in college and spending holidays with them when I couldn’t fly home.
Every other year, we would all get together for a family reunion. Usually skiing in some frigid place like Utah, Canada, or Lake Tahoe. It would be a hustle and bustle of family, laughter, arguments, and bonding memories. As we got older, more silliness would ensue since the cousins would hole up in our own timeshare unit without the parents. There were games played with losers having to pay a price that I cannot even talk about here. We laugh with great tears in our eyes about it now.
Now that more than half of us are married and are working, it’s been a bit harder to get together. Weddings are our chances to get together with everyone. Most recently, we got together for our cousin J’s wedding. Whenever we get together, we get to pick up where we left off. This time around, we all sat around the hotel bar after the festivities of each night and laughed about old times and how crazy all our moms are. What made it even better for me was having all the wives there to keep me company.
The past few days, my text messages have been filled with hilarity from all of them – one of them is the king of memes. I’ve gotten skilled at googling all sorts of memes because of him.
They may be called my cousins, but they are my brothers and sisters. I love when we all get together and wish we could get together more often. I’m thankful that I have two cousins and their spouses plus my brother that live close to me right now. I love that Ninjette knows them and loves them so much. She is showered in love with so many aunts and uncles because of them. If you ask her now, though, her favorite uncle is my brother since he spoils her rotten like a good uncle should. Her favorite aunt is my recently married cousin J. They bonded over glitter and macarons.
I always wanted a ton of brothers and sisters growing up and looking back on it now, I realize that I had them all from the beginning.