Cousins

These days, whenever we can, we take the time to relax and spend time with someone we love. Imagine my glee when I found out yesterday that my sister-in-law was not working and we had nothing to do for the afternoon! That meant a day of relaxing by her pool, letting all the cousins swim while we relaxed and enjoyed some free time. Ahh…I could just imagine the taste of lemonade as the children swam happily, played Marco Polo, and left us alone; every once in a while asking us to look at how wonderfully they were playing, leaving us alone to just be.

Hello, wake up! This is our family we are talking about!

A) There was no lemonade. Water by the jar is our way to go!

B) Kettle popcorn…need I say more?

C) I brought five of my brood, two of whom can't swim, so life jackets are a necessary thing. She has three of her own…all boys…very much boys.

D) There is no relaxing poolside, cause, well, you get splashed..a lot, so you might as well just jump in the pool!

E) It's great to hang with her, because we share our worlds. She has adopted a child out of the foster care system and I have two that I am fostering. We do not have *normal* families, and while so often others may sympathize with what we are going through, it's great to be able to be yourself and KNOW that the other person really KNOWS what you're family is going through, because well, until you've walked this path, it's hard to imagine sometimes.

So, our afternoon consisted of swimming, splashing, dunking, dodging, and throwing children large inflatable balls. For a while we begged them to stop splashing us, but they just couldn't help cannon balling into the water to soak us; in groups. When they weren't practicing their cannonballs, they were plunging over the giant inflatable ball! Frankly, I'm surprised there was any water left in the pool after we left!

Finally, we gave in to our own childish whims and challenged them to a game of volleyball…with the giant ball. We're not one for tradition, which means we don't play by the rules either. We ended up dividing into two teams; boys vs. girls…and the girls ended up on the deep end. Not an easy task when you're only 5ft! The Drama Queen quickly came up with a plan. Whenever the giant ball would come flying our way, she'd jump from the edge of the pool into the ball, slamming it back to the other side. This meant wet fun for her and near drowning for her boy cousins. Comments like, "Don't drown your cousin!"  and "Do you think the ER would give us a 2for1?" were a common theme throughout the day! B-boo wasn't swimming yesterday, but she made sure to get into the volleyball fun. There's nothing like your older cousin, a GIRL, yelling at you to hit the ball when she throws it at your head! Poor little Chicken Noodle Butt tried his hardest, but he was having enough problems trying to stay afloat in his life jacket, let alone smack a giant ball zooming towards his head! This went on for a good hour before the adults tired the children out and they gave up on us. A job well done, in my opinion!

We moved on to poolside popcorn while the younguns' continued to swim; hopping out to open their mouths while we tossed popcorn at them, before jumping back into the pool. We laughed so hard, we actually decided that we'd make a great reality tv show. I heard they make $20,000 per episode…sounds good to us!

About that time a friendly spider decided to visit us me. We'd finally reached the point of relaxation when I felt something crawling…well, in a place where nothing should be crawling! I looked down, saw the little eight-legged creature, and proceeded to jump up and scream. I had enough sense to turn my back to the pool before tearing my swimsuit top apart, but jeesh! Succeeding in getting it gone, I sat back down to try and relax, but sister-in-law was a little on edge since we couldn't figure out where the little critter had been thrown to! You know, it may have been tossed into the pool for all I know; we never did see it again! There was a comment about that making the episode worth than a lot more than $20,000 though! At one point, I turned to her and asked, "You moved back for this?"

I tell ya one thing…those kids sure did sleep good last night!