Party On.

I grew up with all of my dad's family living close by.  There were nine of us cousins and each of our birthdays turned into a family get-together.  It was great fun for all of us to get together and play, and I'm sure the adults loved it just as much.  Now that we are all adults ourselves, these birthdays don't happen anymore.  I take that back, there is one left.  The baby, just turned 17.  He's the youngest of us all, didn't have anyone his age to play with, he was the odd one left out.  The rest of us were paired up two by two, age-wise.  Poor guy.  He is doing alright despite the circumstances.
We spent this past weekend at my folks' and attended that young lad's birthday party.  The cousin attendance was quite low, the cousin picture was a bit empty, but I'm glad we went.  It was fun catching up with some of the relatives, letting Mason show off his new skills, and reminiscing of how these parties used to be.
Unfortunately, Mason may be the odd duck with his cousins.  His only two now are years older than him, and my sister isn't at the baby-making place in her life yet.  I sometimes feel bad that he won't get to have what the 9 of us did, but maybe he'll have something even better?
I hope we get to continue these family gatherings.  Since we've all grown up and moved out, we don't see each other as often as we used to.  Now, getting together involves airplanes and cross country road trips for some, when it used to be just a couple miles down the road before.  As we all become our own little families, I want the parties to continue for our children, getting bigger and bigger, not smaller and smaller.

Yeah, there were puppies at the party.