"Loose Lips Sink Ships"

That may be the appropriate motto for this Cousins Day. We certainly don't want to share what went on.

Suffice it to say that I was able to educate my mother and both of my cousins about things they had no idea existed. I was able to do it with visual aids and we laughed so hard that our sides hurt. In fact, when a husband made the mistake of calling about an hour later we were still laughing so hard he hung up in disgust, assuming we were all drunk and he wouldn't talk to us right then.

(I'm being as vague as I can possibly be so that Brian, who always reads my Cousins Day reports, can let his imagination run wild.)

As I write this, I'm still giggling. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Yes, another Cousins Day is now history. We realized on the ride home that we are coming up on our second anniversary in a couple of months and what a couple of very special years it has been.

Now I will admit that the fact that we were still giggling over my ... uh... illustrative lecture doesn't mean that we weren't also in our cups, but I suspect not quite as deep in them as the husband in question thought. Peach and Kathy had picked me up earlier than usual, so we got to my mother's earlier than usual, and we finished lunch earlier than usual, and finished our third game of 65 earlier than usual so naturally...

It was Kathy's turn to do the drinks and she decided to use up some of the leftover stuff that has been collecting in my mother's liquor cabinet for the past year-plus. Those appletinis go down so smoothly.

It helped to make up for the pain of the card games. Peach continued the winning streak she started at Thanksgiving. You play 11 rounds in each game. The winner of each round gets 20 cents and the winner of the game gets the pot, the rest of the money. I don't know if you can count the money in front of Miss Smartypants there, but she has won seven of the eleven rounds for this particular game.

And she doesn't looke the least repentant about it either.

That's pretty much how the two days went. We just continued to donate money for the "feed my cute little doggies" fund and she continued to rake it in.

Oh, in fairness, I did win two games and my mother won one (Kathy didn't win any, though she has been the big winner in the past and still has a big stash of money to draw from).

At the end of the day yesterday, this was my pathetic stash of coins vs. Miss Smartypants' stash.

She went on to win another game this morning. Fortunately we leave the money there until the next Cousins Day, or we would have had to get some baggage handlers to help her lug all the money out to the car.

We are still talking to her, but just barely. It's a good thing that we shared the good laugh over my ... uh... illustrative lecture.

Some Cousins Days are more intimate than others, with problems discussed or emotions explored, other cousins days are more mundane and centered more on what we've been doing since the last one. This one was kind of a mix of both and I love those kinds of get togethers.

And when you can throw lots of belly laughs into the mix, well, it just doesn't get much better than that.

It was Peach's turn to bring dinner and she brought a delicious nacho-ish kind of casserole that we all loved.

We all went to sleep fairly early and though I think we were all up at least once throughout the night (we're all old ladies, after all), most of us woke up feeling good enough to try to beat Peach again, even though it was a losing battle.

Next Cousins Day the second week in January, but we have an "extended family Christmas" celebration coming up next weekend. I just love that this part of the family has become so much closer since my mother's accident!

(How's that imagination coming, Brian?)

(Brian is Kathy's son)