I miss my cousins

I have been missing my cousins more than usual lately. I have a lot of time to think while I'm delivering the mail, and I have been thinking about them a lot. I wonder what would be going on. I'm sure they would both be married with little rug-rats and hopefully living here so our kids could play together. And we could play together! We'd all get together at grandmas house and our kids would play "Don't Eat Pete!" with grandma. I think Tanya would have the oldest kid. I think she would have gotten married before me and probably had a sweet, quiet, shy little girl first. Tanya was so sweet and always concerned about others. She would have made a good mom. Austin would rough house with Jarom and the boys. There was always a lot of laughing when we got together. And card playing. And toilet papering. Austin and I had some deep talks and he always had theories about things. Some of them made me laugh. I watched a muppet meep video and it totally made me think of Austin. He loved the muppets! And not just when he was a kid. We went and watched "Muppets in Space" at the theatre with Autumn in 1999. Austin also made a bunch of funny videos with his friends. In one of them, they had a tire roll through every scene. That was just his sense of humor :) He also told me about how many times he almost crashed in Alaska because they didn't salt the roads so they were all icy. And he laughed when kids threw rocks at him on his mission. He was such a silly kid! We went rock climbing and he made me do a trust jump so he could prove that the rope had me and I wouldn't fall. It took me forever to let go of the rock and jump. He was just yelling at me to jump and telling me that he wouldn't let me down until I jumped. We did some night rock climbing which was so much fun. He used to hike up in the mountains and eat the bugs! When I was staying with my aunt and uncle for a summer, he told me to only do housework when they were watching so they thought I was helping out a lot. He said to be sure to vacuum while my uncle was watching tv, so he'd be sure not to miss seeing me clean. He convinced me to plant my face in our combination graduation and eagle scout cake. He really got his face in his corner of the cake. He was smart because he got a lot bigger piece that way. When I moved to Scotland and married Brad, Austin wrote a letter to Brad and warned Brad not to stir my ice cream when I told him not to, because I would pour it on his head. I guess in Idaho one time Austin was being a pest and kept stirring my ice cream and I told him if he kept doing that I would pour it on his head, and that odd child wanted me to do that, so he kept stirring, and I poured! I was in Utah with Josh visiting and Austin decided that Josh's first word should be "Austin", so he just kept repeating his name in Josh's ear over and over again. Josh probably thought he was crazy! And it didn't work. When Austin died and I was at their house, I looked on his shelf in the bathroom mirror, and there was a picture in there of me and him. It is now on my cabinet shelf in the bathroom. There are some awesome pictures of Autumn and Austin singing together. Not serious singing, but funny singing. I wasn't even there, but I could just imagine. The pictures are so cute. I think they were singing primary songs. They were the best cousins ever!