Family

Family is a very important thing for a lot of people, and spending time with family- whether you get on with them or not- is vital. It's a thing a lot of people are used to- family all sitting round a table at least once a week for a meal, seeing the cousins or aunties and uncles or grandparents regularly is taken for granted. But my family is rather different. Unfortunately, we often only see each other (cousins and uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews) at celebrations or in a crisis. And I don't mean Christmas and Easter- if I saw my cousins every Christmas I would be so grateful- but unfortunately only occasions like my eldest (and quite poorly) brother's 21st birthday party or my grand-dad's 80th birthday. The last 'crisis' my family had was last year with a very unexpected car-crash. No one was critically injured but it really shook my family and we'd seen each other all well so recently for my grand dad's birthday. Since then I've seen one of my cousins and his (now) wife several times, and I think we all just realized how much we missed each other. I love seeing my cousin and his wife and my uncle and I appreciate them seeing us, too.
Recently however, my other cousins and uncle and aunt (same side) got a new puppy, and this was- amazingly- the push my family needed to prompt us seeing one another again. We'd meaning to meet up since my grand dad's birthday, but things have been so hectic as my younger cousin swims (very well, look out Rio 2016! Pow Pow!) and my uncle and aunt do a lot of hands on parenty things (think soccer-mom but more Manchester-ish) and my older cousin is currently doing a course on teaching swimming to kids with disabilities (I think?) and it's difficult to find a time when everyone's free. But as it's summer, we made the excuse of a new puppy to go over and see them.

Molly

And it was awsome.

We were going to go out for a meal together, but my cousins had been out the night before and weren't feeling up to going out twice in a row, and my grandparents couldn't come because my granddad was going with my other uncle (who we've started seeing more, recently) to see the rugby and my nanna wasn't well enough to come for a meal out. After the meal though, we went and picked my nanna up and we went off to my cousin's house. All of my mum's family live in the same neck of the woods, so it was a quick drive from my nanna's to my cousins' house. Immediately we were greeted by an excitable 16-week old pup and my younger cousin. Note I don't say little. That's because he's twice as tall as me and has flippers instead of feet. Did I mention he swims? And sleeps in a green house?
I saw my cousin's medals and trophy's for swimming (he has many a trophy and lots of very shiny medals) and we all sat in the garden and played with the dogs, and later I sat with the rabbit on my lap (who was really super soft, softer than my angora wool socks yo). The older dog was called Molly, and was constantly being hounded- no pun intended- by Amber, the tearaway toddler who doesn't know the size of her own mouth. Any toy Molly had, Amber wanted. A few times Amber managed to take a toy from Molly, so Molly would get another toy, which Amber would promtly attempt to tackle from Molly's jaw. Even when Amber already had a toy in her mouth, she would run alongside Molly, rugby tackling her for the second toy. It was madness, madness, y'all.

Amber.
I was warned I wouldn't get any
good photos, mwu-ha-ha-ha

Anyway, throwing the balls was endless entertainment for all of us (and the dogs!) especially when we would pretend to throw the ball, then when the dogs went to search, throwing the ball in the other direction and laughing at how dumb they were. When in actual fact, we humans are the dumb ones as we don't know when and how to throw balls in order for a dog to fetch. The game is called 'fetch', not 'try to make your dog look stupid and confuse it'. Stop being so cruel to your dogs, people.

Cookie

Cookie, AKA Tony, AKA Mr Rabbit, was jumping round his little run like Tigger on a fresh spring morning (my cat Tigger, not the cartoon character, although remarkable similarities in jumping height), until we took some notice of him, and I then sat with him on my lap for about 40 minutes. He was so soft and fluffy guys it was like stroking a silky cloud. Apart from where Amber had been licking him, because apparently some dogs like to lick their rabbits. No seriously, Amber really likes the rabbit. I reckon it's because they're the same size and so feel able to relate to each other's struggles, like not being able to reach the cereal on the top shelf.
By the way, who keeps cereal on the top shelf?

Anyway, it was a lovely day, and as we were driving back to my nanna's house to drop her back home, we saw an arm sticking awkwardly and waving madly out of the car in front. Then we realized it was our other cousin with his wife. It was mad. And awesome. We just totally weren't expecting to see them, as his mum has recently moved house and we know that they'd been busy helping her move, but like I said earlier they all live near each other, so it was totally believable that we'd have bumped into them like that. It just put the cherry on top of my day, because like I was saying earlier, I just love seeing them. All of them are so rad, I just wish we lived closer. Because if we lived closer to one, we'd live closer to all of them! And then we could randomly bump into each other all the time! I think I have a bit of a fairy-tale-ish perception of living close to your family. I don't care. But anyway, they got out of their car and we got out of our car and we stood around and talked for a bit and then they had to go, but it was great, it felt like the most worth while visit to anywhere ever.

And family.

The only thing I dislike about seeing my family is that it reminds me how much I miss them.