29) Family (Also entitled: Confessions)

Wow...I have not posted in so long. I am terribly sorry, (and am feeling like Maggie, who is always apologizing...she and I need to learn a lesson from Gibbs-an apology is a sign of weakness-but I digress).

Today's topic (rather last Wednesday's topic) is family. What can I say? I love them all five of them...plus the extended relations, however odd they all may be.

You can go to this page of my blog to find out more about my nuclear family. And since I have already written about them, I can feel free to talk about cousins, uncles, and grandmothers, and the lot of them.

All of them live in the country side...in the middle of nowhere...an hour and a half away from the closest Wal-mart...
They have the deepest southern accents you ever did hear. All of them have college football as their second (sometimes even first) religion.

I shall begin with my grandfather, on my father's side. He is a southern Baptist preacher, a very nice man.
My uncle, my dad's brother, lives with Pawpaw and takes care of him. His room is an Alabama football sanctuary, and that just about sums him up.

On my mom's side, there is my grandmother who makes the world's best biscuits.
Mom's sister Aunt Kelly makes the best peanut butter pie on Thanksgiving.
Mom's other sister Kim, lives in a big huge house on a tall, tall hill. When I was little I got lost in that house.
Mom's brother Kevin is a big tough man (over 6 feet and a billion inches tall) he drives 18 wheelers and motor cycles and all sorts of other fun stuff to match his tough-guy tattoos. He has a weakness for making pretty bead jewelry...
Kelly's son, my cousin, Brett has the most fantastic yellow truck.
Kim's son, another cousin, Cody is a welder. He is a country gentleman and drives 10 under the speed limit with women and children in his truck, to make sure every one is safe and sound.
Kim's daughter, another cousin, Casey, although gorgeous, is a true country girl. When she was little she tried eating rocks...and now as she is older, gets in trouble in other ways...I'll tell a story here in a minute about one of our escapades. She wants to be a nurse when she grows up.
Kevin's son, yet another cousin, Little Kevin (yes, instead of Kevin Sr. and Jr. we call them Big Kevin and Lil' Kevin) takes after his dare-devil father in the ways of motorcycling.
Kevin's daughter Brianna is a beauty too. She is quiet, shy, and sweet. She is the type of girl One Direction discusses in "What Makes You Beautiful".
Kevin's other daughter Shae is a doll too. She takes after Brianna in being shy.
Kevin's other son Levi is an adorable little kid...I don't know much about him except that he showed me a picture he drew at school one time...

So here is my story:
One week in the summer years ago, me, Casey, Brianna, and Brianna's friend Amber were hanging out at Mawmaw's house. Big Kevin let us take his Ranger (Some sort of outdoor 4-wheeled vehicle that looks like the tough version of a golf cart) out to the baseball park.
We had done this often. The ball park was just down the road from Mawmaw's house. Brianna drove us there (take note that she was the youngest of the four of us...) and we had fun going up and down all the hills and exciting stuff like that. We weren't doing any damage.
A little while into our adventure, there came a lady in a black car. She stopped us and asked what in the world we were doing. She went on and on about how naughty all this nonsense was. Didn't we know that there had been some high school boys who had come and vandalized the park? Didn't we know that driving on the grass was vandalism? Look at those awful tire tracks! The grass is going to die! We just destroyed the world....Shame upon us. She was going to call the police. How old were we? Yikes! None of us have our driver's license? What is wrong with us?!
We scrambled with excuses. Our uncle-Brianna's dad-gave us permission! We had adults permission!
Amber was the only one with a cellphone. She called Uncle Kevin, and he came promptly, only a few moments before the police arrived.
He told us to get out of there and he would take care of everything. So we scrammed! On our way out a police car stopped us. We said our uncle-Brianna's dad-was over there and was taking care of everything. The police woman was very, very nice and let us go on.
Once we got back to Mawmaw's house, we died laughing.
Our only regret was that we couldn't go driving there for the rest of the week, because the crazy lady was continually checking up on the state of things at the ball park, ensuring there was no naughty kids vandalizing.

Another fun story involving all the cousins (except Shae and Levi, because they weren't born yet) is about a trampoline. My oh my, that was a fun trampoline. All seven of us got on at once, much to our parent's dismay. We liked to double bounce each other and try to make each other bounce off or into the hole. Did I mention there was a hole in the trampoline? There was a hole in the trampoline about the diameter of a beach ball. That was big enough for us to fall in. And goodness, it was fun to fall in!
All our parents told us not to jump in the hole, but when they weren't looking, we did.
There isn't really a point to this story, other than telling you what my family is like. You can derive from these stories that me and my cousins have all the naughty kinds of fun...But nothing too shameful...although...

I'll tell this one too. Me and Lil' Kevin were chilling at Mawmaw's house. He had some bottle rockets that he was showing me how they work. (All the cousins make fun of me for being a city girl, and it is true. So sometimes I try to prove myself to them. This was one of those instances)
He showed me how the bottle rocket blew up glass bottles, and what they did in puddles (The puddle was fun, I recommend that one. The glass bottle is a little dangerous though), and how they frightened small animals...Then we got a terrific idea.
Kevin had some small fish he was going to use for bait. They were going to die eventually...So we stuck a bottle rocket in one of the fish. It was the funniest thing I ever saw. The fish didn't die like we had expected, it just flopped around insanely. Even Mawmaw laughed.
Kevin was proud of me, that I had done something so dastardly. I had earned a little bit of country folk respect!

Another time, we wanted to play hide and seek in the dark. Mawmaw warned us not too. She said we couldn't see anything out there and we might get hurt. We didn't listen. We were adamant about playing outside in the dark.
We had the most delightful time! There were two houses, two semi trucks, one car, a barn, and a shed to hide around and in.
After an hour or so of playing, I was getting all wound up. I was running to base madly and blindly (because I had lost a contact and could only see out of my left eye). I tripped and fell and my right leg was all scratched up. 
Well of course one of us had to get hurt; Mawmaw said one of us would. And of course it was me. My whole lower leg was bleeding.
All of us kids (me, Lil' Kevin, Brianna, Casey, and Kevin's friend Dakota) felt guilty about it. So we didn't show Mawmaw what happened. We sneaked inside and Casey helped me wash my wound (like I said, she wants to be a nurse).
Mawmaw never found out, but we minded her the rest of the time we were at her house.