Friday, January 2, 2015

Brother-Cousins


Somewhere in an old photo album at my parents' house, there is a picture of my two cousins, my sister and me. We are standing outside on the porch, looking in through the front door. Outside, the world is a snowy background. What can be seen of our faces is bright brink, our hair is frozen in snowy chunks protruding from under our hats. We are bundled and bulky. And each of us is beaming. 
For many years of my childhood, we lived next door to or down the street from my Dad's brother and his family. My two sister-cousins (as I often think of them) are about the same age as my younger sister and I, and the four of us were playmates most days.
When I imagined the ideal childhood for my own boys, there was lots of snow and time with cousins.


Grey and Micah only have two cousins so far. James and Finn are, much like my sister-cousins were to me, the same age as my boys. When they are together, they play so well. They wrestle, laugh, dance, and play together in a way that I have rarely seen my boys play with other kids. Like some part of them, innate and deep-down perhaps, knows that these boys are family.
Travis' sister Camille and her family live in England right now, and are soon headed south to Australia. Our boys haven't played together in a year and a half, and probably won't again for at least that length of time.
While I've often regretted the fact that they live so far from us, it wasn't until this Christmas trip that I realized how much we are really missing out by having them in another country.
What a treat it has been for our families to spend so much time together this Christmas! And as enjoyable as it is for the boys to play with their cousins, it's been equally fun for us to spend time with Chris and Camille.



This holiday season has been practically perfect and I am already sad with the thought of saying good bye to the snow and the Spencers soon. Until that sad, near day. We are going to live it up. Snow days and cousin fun. Can't get much better.




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3 comments:

Polly said...

Beautiful pictures! I love how they capture the joy and wonder of winter.

Carol said...

Nice post. They had a lot of fun and are learning about each other! So glad it happened.

Unknown said...

Thanks babe! We had a wonderful time too, and look forward to the next snowy Christmas!