This One's For My Cousins...

Today I need to write about my cousins, they know why.

Did you know I have more than 30 cousins and over half of them are from my Dad's side of the family (he is the oldest of 8 kids)? Though I never get to see them enough now (gets harder as an adult, especially trying to see two families on holidays these days), I saw them a LOT as a kid.

We are lucky enough to basically have a "street" (not really, but thats the only way to explain it) in New Hampshire with little cottages along it leading to a lake. Each family has their own cottage, or half of their own cottage. As a kid, I went there basically every summer weekend and sometimes for weeks at a time. This meant I got to see my cousins a lot back then. They were basically like my sisters and brothers instead of my cousins.

Wanna see how cute we were?

I'm second from the left and I'm pretty sure I'm missing my two front teeth.

Our place at Sunapee (now you know why Caroline's address is sunapeegirl.wordpress.com) is really not near anything. You have to drive 20 minutes for a grocery store and to find most restaurants. I think the nearest movie theater is about 40 minutes away? You get the point. But somehow we never managed to be bored...

What did we do?

Well, we had some canoe wars. So basically some of us were in one canoe and some of us in the other and then we would see who could tip who first. This would've been slightly more fair if one of the canoes was not nicknamed "the tippy canoe" haha.

Once my uncle made us a frog and fish pond. He literally dug it all up and got some frogs and fish. This somehow entertained us for an entire summer.

The same uncle (it was Michael right? I was, of course, never really told) also spray painted rocks gold and hid the rocks and some little "treatures" in a treasure box and hid it in a place we would find it. We thought that we had literally found treasure...

Gullible? Nah...just kids :)

We road around on the "party boat" which was basically our really old pontoon boat that couldn't go over 10 mph, but we loved it.

We participated in the small town 4th of July parade. We dressed up in ridiculous outfits- I think I was Miss America one year? Haha, don't ask!

We played lots of sports. We got to use a tennis court next door for a couple of years. We made our own baseball field. I pretended to like basketball just to hang out with Brian even though I've never had any skill in that sport. When were older (and had a boat that went over 10 mph) we learned how to water ski and wake board. Plus we flipped each other off the "screamer" rafts!

Even when it wasn't really "summer" weather out, we still entertained ourselves. We made up dances to all the songs on the Now and Then soundtrack, we learned how to draw horses from our resident expert Kristen, we watched movies at the "top house", and we played endless hours of the "cheating game of war" (obviously more fun than the regular game of war).

When we were especially lucky we got to blast music in Kate and Meghan's car and go down to get the most delicious soft serve ice cream. We ate at the best tavern that just closed this year :( We had endless cook outs and we got to attend my uncle's parties when he had friends up (who were about the age that I am now...funny to think about).

Apparently we sung at times, which is scary to think about because I'm pretty sure that side of the family has limited singing talent...

I even practiced my early teaching skills on my "little sisters" Courtney and Shannon haha

It was the best. That's the only way to explain it.

So to all my amazing cousins, I love you all and I'm thinking of you guys today. Miss you Bri. <3