Cousins

I just counted all the days in December I was with my family and I got 12. Those are official, countable events, not just drop bys. That's a lot by the way. That's at least 3 days a week. Fortunately, my family not only loves each other, we genuinely like each other. Even the in-laws. We got lucky there. Speaking of in-laws, only one of the girls in the picture above isn't a cousin, and that's because she married my brother. If you don't know my family, there's no way you can pick her out. She blends right in with the Christensen cousins.

Most of my cousins live in the Salt Lake Valley so I get to see them year round, but others either returned after living far away or visited for the holidays.

I was lucky enough to have cousins my age that I grew up with. We were not only cousins, we were friends. We took ballet classes together, we went to each others birthday parties and we played at each others houses (see here and here).

I didn't really have any good friends until college. The friends I had in high school were just people to hang out with. I didn't feel like they really knew me or understood me or had much in common with me. So cousins were good for me. I always had friends around.


It's fun getting older and getting to know some of my younger cousins on the same level that I knew my "peer" cousins growing up. Just yesterday I got together with my cousins Liz and Sam for breakfast. Sam is several years younger than I am but now that she's an adult it's fun to see her get married, how much she's accomplished with work and just her character. I'm proud of her and I'm glad she and her husband still live close.

Last Monday we had a Durham Christmas Party at my Aunt Linda's house. I actually considered not going because I felt like I'd had a lot of family togetherness. But mostly because I'd had a pretty bad day and thought I didn't want to see anybody. But I went and was immediately greeted by one of my cousins and I immediately thought, "Oh yeah, I really love these guys." I was put into a better mood instantaneously. And then we sat down and had a casual dinner. I sat by my cousin Monica (see below).

Monica is one of my oldest cousins on my dad's side. We're about 8 or 9 years apart so I didn't really know her growing up, but now that we're both grown up, it's been fun to talk to her. This picture is of us on a bus in London. We were both tagalongs with the Utah Chamber Artists Tour (I came with my mom, she came with her sister) so we got to spend a lot of time together while the choir rehearsed. The trip wouldn't have been the same without her there.

We had such a great time at that party just talking to each other. I'm so blessed to have wonderful, talented, intelligent, and fun people as relatives. We talked about having a cousin getaway. I hope we do that.

Remember when sitcoms would get lazy and instead of writing a new episode they'd throw together a retrospective? They'd pick a theme and then find all the clips that fit that theme. That's kind of what I did for the first hour I sat at my computer. You probably wouldn't have noticed, but in the right column, I revised my personal picks and added a few other categories because when I don't feel like writing on my blog, I visit memory lane and read old posts. I wasn't going to post anything new but I forced myself because one of my 2011 goals is to blog more and facebook less. I need to get back into writing, I'm out of practice. If my posts are boring for awhile, it's because I'm making myself do this.

*I will say one good thing about Facebook: It's helped me get to know some of my older cousins (and their spouses) that I didn't really get to know when I was little. Now we have more specific questions to ask each other when we do get together.