Video - Day Seven - It Takes a Village so Meet My Village

The other day I was thinking about the fact that my baby cousin just graduated from nursing school. If success is measured by education in my family - we are successful. If success is measured by love of family and friends - we are successful. It makes me want to do exactly what our collective parents did, and that means that Hillary Clinton was right - it takes a village.

Every one of my cousins has a college degree of some sort. One has a Ph.D. and he also has seven children and is a Bishop in the LDS Church. Many of us have degrees in Social Science or Family Science. Two of us have nursing degrees. A few have degrees in Childhood Education. One is a Physician's Assistant. One is an Accountant and CPA. One is an actor (with a Family Science degree) who has been in national touring shows.

Collectively we have 43 children between the ages of 18 and a baby girl who was born last week. We have family reunions with all of us every 18 months, alternating between Utah and Arizona. We all have dinners monthly with our respective families, and really, any excuse to get together is good enough for us.

Do we all get along 100% of the time? Of course, not! We are a bunch of kids descended from major debaters. As in champion debate team debaters. Therefore, we can get into some whopper discussions where an outsider would think we were fighting.

We are all sizes and shapes. Our hair color and eye color is all different. My kids call all of my cousins either Aunt or Uncle because it's easier that way.

But the thing I love most, is that when we are all together, you can have any combination of people and the comfort level is the same - whether you are biological or in-law. I know that if anything ever happened to my husband and me, that our kids would be just fine, thanks to my village.


2 comments:

  1. Love it! I was totally think about this the other day. I am so blessed to have family and relatives that are educated, informed, willing to debate and keep it real...even if we are spread all over the world and can't see each other as much as you guys. Wow. That is awesome how often you get together.

    Enjoy the holidays! Always good to read your stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  2. i miss christmas's in utah! love you guys!

    ReplyDelete