Growing up my sister, Monica, and I had a favorite cousin, Julie. Since it was the Eighties, we did lots of awesome stuff like collect Garbage Pail Kids, shop for Guess Jeans (that was more Monica and Julie’s thing), and eat at Bobby McGees, a restaurant in Southern California where the wait staff dressed up as famous people. I always hoped we’d get the heavy-set waiter who dressed like Babe Ruth, but the girls far preferred the moody waiter in the James Dean garb, a preference which baffled me then but makes much more sense now.
At the time, when we were kids giggling over milkshakes and cheeseburgers, it would have been impossible to imagine that one day we would be parents to ten kids of our own. But twenty plus years later that is exactly what we are!
Unfortunately, since Julie and her husband, Ryan, have lived in Oregon ever since all of this baby making began, we haven’t found the opportunity to get all of the kids together at once. Luckily, Julie and her brood were in Southern California recently, so we all met up at Monica’s house.
Within minutes of getting together Julie’s kids (Hailey, 11, a girl friend of Hailey’s, 10, Zach, 9, Jake, 7, Ryan, 5, and Tyler, almost two) were playing in the backyard with Monica’s kids (Spencer, 6, Danny, 4, and Michaela, almost 2). They instantly acted like they’d been best of friends for life.
This left Lil’ Miss Annie, who doesn’t often find herself around so many kids, highly confused. I took her into the backyard to play with the rest, but she did not know how to react – in fact she looked like she had been dropped in a war zone. As balls soared through the air and kids screamed at the top of their lungs, Annie freaked and sprinted toward the house. I half expected her to fall to her knees and raise her hands in the air à la Willem Dafoe in “Platoon.”
For the next couple hours Annie stood at the window and stared out at the other kids as if trying to psyche herself up to go back out there again. It was a sad sight. But, energized after eating her first ever Popsicle, Annie found the gumption to stomp outside and join in the fun with her cousins. I was so proud of her – it couldn’t have been easy for her to hang with kids who were used to having so many kids around all the time.
Soon it was time for Julie and her kids to leave, so we snapped a photo to commemorate the occasion. Unfortunately, by this time the babies were in meltdown mode and the older boys were exhausted from running about. No one is getting a Pulitzer for this:
Baby meltdown brought to you by “Too Much Sun” and “Sugar.”
It was incredible to see our kids playing together just as Monica, Julie, and I did back in the day. But whereas it used to be just the three of us, now there are three times as many!
Here’s hoping we can get them together in the future – and capture a photo where Annie doesn’t look like Freddy Krueger is in the room with her.
Anthony from CharismaticKid says:
Oh baby how I would love to be hanging with that gang. They LOOK AWESOME.
Kate @ UpsideBackwards says:
Even melting down, Annie is gorgeous!
How lovely to have so many cousins so close in age. A large close family is such fun to grow up in
Sarah says:
Aaaaahaha… That picture is great.
Dianne says:
LOL. That looks like every picture I try to get of my son and all his cousins! I love it!
Amber says:
LOVE the kid pic at the end!!! OMG! We have 3 kids so before I even scrolled down to see it, I could picture what it was going to look like and I wasn’t disappointed! :o) I’m sure the lady on the elliptical was annoyed by my chuckling! Hahaha!
Adrianne says:
Ha! I love the third boy from the left! He’s so bored with everything that he passed out! Or at least he’s pretending to be passed out:) Cute picture. Annie is so lucky to have so many cousins.
Pattie says:
Awesome photo. Here’s hoping Annie gets to see her cousins often throughout the years.
Maggie says:
We do the “cousins” picture every Thanksgiving. We are a family of five girls. Our kids now range from 28-15, there are 11 of them. We line them up on my sister’s couch every year. My oldest nephew and his wife have just given birth to a beautiful little boy, so now we need to start a new annual picture for that generation!
jess says:
Omg my mom STILL makes us do the “cousin” picture! Every Christmas Eve we sit on the stairs and we range in age from 29 (me) to 8! Hilarious! I’m glad we’re not the only ones who still do that!
Melanie says:
Bobby McGees!! So sad they closed the one by our house (in Brea off the 57). It is now a Chinese buffet place.
Amy Collen says:
Actually, I think it is pictures just like these that win the Pulitzer. LOL! I also wanted to let you know that the infamous scene in Platoon that you are talking about was performed by Willem Dafoe , not Tom Berenger. Hee hee :). Hard to forget when my kiddos reenact this very scene about once a week! The perfect temper tantrum pose!
Mike says:
Amy, you win the awesome person prize of the day! I totally woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Was it Berenger? Or Dafoe?” At that point my man cold was out of control though and I couldn’t bear to check the Internet to find out. I just fixed it. Honestly though, I’m just so glad someone knew what I was referencing!
Amy Collen says:
Aw thanky! No problem :).