COUSINS!!

When you have 65 cousins, it's pretty easy to have AWESOME ones! I love my cousins! They are some of my best friends in the whole world! I've had TONS of good memories and the best thing is, because we're cousins, we will see each other at least once a year and the memories can just keep coming! I believe that our cousinship wouldn't be this great without a simple thing that we call "Cousin Ice Cream." My Junior year we started doing Cousin Ice Cream. One Sunday night Tenor and Brock invited us out to their house for some ice cream! It was delicious!

We thought, "Hey, we oughta do this more often!" So we started doing it EVERY Sunday! Each Sunday we would get together and eat ice cream and play games and talk about everything from my non-existent boyfriends and their sometimes existent girlfriends to wrestling and football and sometimes they'd let me talk a little basketball. It was great! We grew so much closer as we sat around one of the cousins' dinner tables. I speak of this today because: one, I love my cousins, and two, it was always our joke that Ice Cream led to success! And I stand by that still today. Last Sunday we met up again for Cousin Ice Cream. It's harder now because Tenor, Brigham, Olivia, and I are all away from Cokeville. Conveniently, Aunt Marlene and Uncle Sam live in Heber! So we met up at their house for Cousin Ice Cream.

(Disclaimer: If you couldn't tell, these weren't last week, but they are at Aunt Marlene's and Uncle Sam's)

It was important to do it last week, because this week was State Football! On Thursday Olivia and I headed out on our way to Laramie for the Championship game! It was really exciting to watch CHS Football again! The boys played Great! I was especially proud of James and Brock! They are not only AWESOME football players, but plain awesome people! They are nice and humble and have incredible testimonies and they care and they work hard and they are strong, physically and mentally and spiritually! I am so lucky to be their cousin! Anyways, CHS WON! It was a great game! The Cousin Ice Cream party that we had last Sunday did its job and the boys got another State Championship to add to their collections!

Through the years I have developed a list of 5 Keys to Success: 

1. Heavenly Father. He gave me my body and my health and He helps me a lot!
2. The BEST Coaches and the BEST teammates. It's impossible to win without them!
3. Hard Work! There is no substitute for flat out working hard!
4. EXCELLENCE! Label your water bottle "EXCELLENCE". Drink it throughout the day. Winner!
5. Ice Cream and Family! Family supports and Ice Cream is magic! 

If you have those 5 things it's pretty hard to not be successful. I am thankful that I grew up knowing that I could count on my Heavenly Father to hear my prayers and bless me. I am thankful for coaches and teammates who pushed me and shaped my life. I know that hard work is sometimes hard... that's why it's called HARD work. Hard work is helpful in all parts of life, not just sports. And I am thankful for the support my family always gives me, and for the Ice Cream that means so much more to me now than just a tasty treat! 

That was a ramble of a lot of things. Sorry. What I really wanted to say was that it's important to build relationships with your family and your cousins because they're going to be your friends forever!

Also, Good Job Panthers! Go CHS!  

Have a Good Week!!