Some happy stuff

After the past few days I need a little dose of happy, so here are some of the highlights from last weekend in Providence. My 2 cousins taught me so much about life while I was growing up. They introduced me to important music and great art, showed me how to play truth or dare, opened my eyes to boys, gave me an example of being a teenager and living to tell the tale, made sure I knew how not to kill my parents or die of embarrassment from them, what it really means to be cool, to work on your insides first, all sorts of things that were crucial to my forming as a person. My cousins are amazing women and their families are really wonderful. They both have great husbands who love them dearly and fantastic kids who are not only adorable, but smart to boot. I'm proud to call these people my family. They're the kind of people I'd be friends with even if blood didn't bind us together. That's a very good feeling.



This is Max. He's the fiercest 6 year old dragon around. Raaawwwr! He can fly, too. Check out the next pic for proof.



See? He can fly. When I was little my Uncle Bill would do this with me and I would squeal with delight as I "flew" around in circles. It was so much fun. I'd beg him to fly me around every time I saw him. Now he does it with his grandkids and it's a joy for me to see them love it as much as I did.



One of the best things about being an adult is getting to torture little kids the way you were tortured. Now, when I say torture I mean the kind kids beg for. The "spin me around 'til I'm dizzy, PLEASE!" and "turn me upside down and shake me 'til I feel like I'm gonna puke!" kind of torture. Max & Ivan had a ball and so did I.



Princess Sydney sitting pretty with her parasol. This kid could melt the polar ice caps (not that we need any help in that department... we adults seem to be doing a bang-up job of it). She is devastatingly cute and she knows it. This one's going to be trouble in a few years.