Fun Cousin Reunion - Love These Women!

I was so grateful that I was feeling up to traveling today. I have been under the weather for several days and am not feeling well at the moment but went to bed super early last night as was able to get some decent sleep and actually had some dreams which doesn't always happen so I know I got deep sleep and awoke feeling better than I have in a few days. 

I traveled several hours and enjoyed getting to see my mothers brother and sister as my aunt and her husband have been serving as missionaries in London for the past 18 months and we were able to visit with them and some of their 10 children today which was WONDERFUL! 

I was SUPER happy to see these wonderful women there today. They are cousins from my mothers sister that passed away a few years back. Here is a post where I am at the hospital giving her a pedicure just before she passed away. 

I think the last time I saw all four of these women in the same place was my aunts funeral in 2013. Here is a link to my aunts funeral post.

I was so excited that all of these sisters were there today at the homecoming for my aunt. I used to babysit them for several weeks a year as their parents would travel or work on something. They were the cutest kids and we enjoyed playing games, especially hide and seek etc. I learned many useful things from my aunt while working for her and she was sweet to notice we needed money to purchase clothes in Jr. and high school and would pay us for babysitting so we could earn that money. I had to purchase my own clothes since I was about ten years old by babysitting and doing chores. 

Many of my clothes were used or hand me downs from my older sister or friends of the family so it was always great when I could "lay away" some new clothes and purchase them with my babysitting funds. 

When talking to my cousins today, I was touched once again by the fact that we all have trials. Each one of these women has had many issues in their life. They have lost two brothers and a sister before they lost their mother several years ago and they have had some similar issues as my girls dealing with estranged family members so I was so happy to see them all there smiling their way through their life trials. 

I had to get gas before heading home and when I pulled into the station, I am not sure why I went way to one side when there were many pumps open and I waited in my car for the person in front of me to pull out for at least a full minute as they had finished pumping but they didn't pull out so I got out and started filling up on the back pump. When I finished, I just smiled as I looked down and saw I filled up at pump 11 and filled up with 11.118 gallons of gas. So, there were 111111 ones in a row at the bottom of the receipt and 111 at the top of the receipt. I wasn't feeling that great as the long day took its toll on my not so well feelings from the week but that lifted my spirit a bit.

On my long drive home, I was able to think about each woman and how amazing they turned out even with all their trials.

They have been doing lots of construction on the highway and I was taking an exit in the middle of construction and the signs weren't very clean and I drove off the pavement dropped the car about 10 inches into the construction area and KNOW that angels were watching over me as the dirt gravel area had large mounds of dirt and I slid this way and that and was able to avoid hitting the huge mounds and ended up skidding to a stop sideways in the construction zone!

Thank heavens that there were no cars behind me following me. I am also grateful that I didn't hit the piles of dirt and fly off over the edge as I don't know that anyone would have found me over the edge as the main amount of traffic was on the opposite side of the highway and I wasn't near the exit as I went off before it as it wasn't marked well. 

I have lots to be grateful for today! I feel so blessed! I hope you have a Blessed day as well!