Cousins, Cousins Everywhere!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

The great thing about cousins is that they're best friends . . .but related. So even if you haven't hung out for awhile, they're sure to keep popping into your life at semi-regular intervals. And when they do, you're SO glad (or at least we hope we're glad because families are forever and you're linked to these people, right?).

Anyway, in our case we are SO glad when cousins pop in! And Bethany is blessed to not only have a lot of wonderful first cousins who are her best friends, but also some pretty awesome second cousins! And this week we did a lot of serious second-cousin bonding.

To start this post off, I need to give some space to Bethie's cousin Tate, a.k.a. "Cousin Speedy," the cutest little hombre to ever run about in a sombero:





Seriously, nothing is funnier than watching this little guy run around in this hat. It's wider than he is tall and he just RUNS. He needs a soundtrack. So, so funny! But back to our post.

My cousin--I'm very fond of my cousins, too--Michelle has two little girls, and my Aunt Sheri, who was watching them while their brother had surgery and their other brother was with my uncle, decided to bring them to Logan for a couple of days so they could spend some time with Grandma-Great and their Logan cousins. And we Logan cousins--I'm counting Cambrie as a "Logan cousin" as she's been here for the summer, which we're all getting quite used to and, in fact, we may not let move--(like my run-on sentence?) did all we could to show them a good time!

We started with a picnic at Willow Park. Cousins, cousins, everywhere and ready for lunch!



And we actually had quite a crew with Bethany, Cambrie, McKenzie, Jocelyn, Savanna, Claire, and our brave lone hombre, Tate. After our picnic, the kids dug for buried treasure (Bethany taught them that you yell, "Ooreka!" when you find something so we had a lot of little shouts of "Ooreka!" going on)



We climbed trees for awhile and played "Sleeping Beauty" in the trees (with Cambrie and Bethany really getting into it, as shown):



And then we were off to see the animals at the zoo.



(And thank goodness, the tortises were not mating again, as they were in our last visit!!! That's always SO awkward.) We all enjoyed the animals but I'll tell you, as time went in it just got hotter and hotter until it was definitely time to head across the street to the Logan Aquatic Center and a dip in the pool.

There's nothing like that first dip in the pool when you're THAT HOT to make you say, "Ahhhhhhh." It's like all of your troubles are just erased in one, beautiful moment and the world goes from a place you can't stand to a place of loveliness and everything good. AND there's nothing like that snow cone after you've had that dip to make you say "Ahhhhhh" again! That's just the cherry on top.

Savanna eating her rainbow snow:



And Bethie doing the same . . .



. . .to the very last drop:



While Grandma-Great looked on and enjoyed her posterity and her nice chair in the shade:



The next day, Bethany and I took Savanna, Claire, Grandma-Great and Aunt Sheri to The American West Heritage Center for some day-before-Pioneer-Day fun. We rode the train, rode the ponies, panned for gold and treasure ("Ooreka!") sat in teepees, fed chickens, chased peacocks, and went to another tea party. All in all, a very fun time and Bethany loved getting to know these "new" cousins! Saying goodbye was hard all around, but after promising she'll see them again at the reunion in a couple of weeks, Bethany finally let them go after many hugs.



You know, you just can't have too many cousins.