cousins...

We had a little holiday down south last week - decided to go and see our friends Jen & Rob in Oxford and then nipped over to Essex for a couple of days to see my cousin Natalie and her family.

Natalie has 3 children (Jamie is 3 and was off chasing the kitten at the time this photo was taken!) and I'd only ever met the eldest once, when she was a very small girl so we thought we'd make our time off count for something by actually doing something!

Ella is the eldest and Lily is the youngest. Lily wasn't well at all, she had a really sore ear while we were staying but she was such a little trouper, she didn't let it get her down too much at all.

The girls LOVED Arlo. It's the first time that he's ever been around older children and he loved all the attention. Ella and Lily were taking it in turns to hold him and help us change his nappy and stuff, it really was lovely. These are Arlo's only children aged family I realised. And even that's scraping the barrel a bit as the children are my 2nd cousins!

It made me a bit sad for him that he's not going to have loads and loads of cousins running around him, getting him into trouble and keeping him amused. As one of 5, my mum had quite a few nieces and nephews for me to play with and I loved it. I suppose it happens this way in small families. It just kind of struck me for some reason.