Cousin advice

First of all, the counsel: Take pictures when you have company.

I get too wrapped up in everything going on: the food preparation and serving and cleaning up, that I forget to take pictures.

I have a lot of first cousins! On my mother's side of the family, there were 36 grandchildren, minus my eight brothers and sisters and myself, that leaves me with 27 first Fox cousins. (I don't count their spouses as "first cousins") On my father's side, my Grandpa Garner had 63 grandchildren (he had nine children who mostly had nine children), minus the 9 of my siblings and the number is 54. I have 81 first cousins.

One of my first cousins, Ellen Jensen Van Soolen, lives in Las Vegas. Another first cousin, Karen Garner Mills Walker, lives in Clovis, CA and her husband Mike had a seminar in Las Vegas last week. They drove to our house on Sunday August 1st and we had a blast playing games, talking, catching up on all our children and grandchildren. (For those who don't know, Karen used to live in Katy, Texas, and all five of her children are within a few months/years of my five children ages. We used to go to Katy or they came to Plano so our kids could have fun together and we could hang out. We always had so much fun. There is a history here. So our catching up had to cover since the mid-'90's when we last saw each other.

Monday, August 2 I rode with them to St. George, Utah to visit Mike's son and family who live there, visit my brother Lance and his family that lives there, touring a pioneer museum and the winter home of Brigham Young, which was all very interesting. (Karen has a brother Layne who lives in Torqerville, Ut, just north of St. George that I didn't get to visit. Maybe next time.)

Tuesday they went to their training and stayed at the hotel down on the strip for two days, while Steve and I drove to Provo to attend the wedding of Steve's nephew Seth. We drove back on Wednesday, stopping in St. George for supper with Lance and Rhonda, which was wonderful.

Thursday Karen and Mike returned to our house, and we did a session in the Las Vegas Temple with Ellen and Jerry, hanging out at the house afterward. Saturday we had a chance to go to Harrah's karaoke bar at 4 p.m. and sing a few tunes, including my Karen Carpenter version of "Close to You" and Karen and I were back up singers while Ellen sang "We are Family." I only knew the chorus! Afterward, we met at our house for supper and sat around the kitchen table laughing and talking and having a great time.

We should do this more often. And I should take pictures! A special thanks to my great cousins and their wonderful husbands for including us in their lives.

And as a former Texan would say: "Ya'll come back now!"