I have a pretty big family, this is because my dad has 2 brothers and 1 sister, who are all married and have kids. All together I have at least 15 cousins, maybe more. Some are about my age, 13-16, others are about 6-10, and some are about 1-5. We’re all pretty close too. I’d like to consider most of my family immediate. This also includes very close family friends and everyone’s pets too. Almost every Saturday and Sunday, my family gets together. 

We don’t do anything crazy on the weekends though, we just hang out, play video games, go outside, to the park, or head to the store and cause havoc. Every once in a while, we make games that people of every age can get involved in. This is always really fun. Usually, it has something to do with a ball getting thrown around and we rarely play board games. Sometimes on Saturday we stay the night at someone’s house, usually mine because it’s the best. 

Sometimes on long weekends, we go camping. Every year we go camping at least once at the Colorado River, because it’s the best camping place we’ve found so far. Last year my family went to Utah to go camping. They climbed some trees and rocks. I saw pictures and it looked amazing. One year when we were camping it randomly started pouring rain. All the younger kids got scared because someone made a joke about it being a hurricane. Everyone was running around trying to pick things up off the ground so that clothes and electronics wouldn’t get wet. Meanwhile, one of my cousins and I were running around in bathing suits trying to find a phone I got a week before. The good news is that we found it. The bad news was that we were soaked. That night my cousin stayed in my tent and we watched Netflix. On that same trip, we were camping for a week. When we got back home everyone was super sunburnt and had a lot of blisters and bug bites. That was a great year, it was super fun, even though it hurt afterward. This is a really great memory that I think about all the time. 

Some other memories that I like to think of are of my family’s tradition of going to an amusement park every year. Usually Knotts Berry Farm or Universal Studios. We’ve also gone to some fairs and Disney World. This year we’re going to try to go to LegoLand. I love to go on rides with my family. It’s really fun to go on scary rides with your favorite people. One time I went on a ride with my cousin when we were younger, he had gotten scared and started crying and I did the same thing. After that, we wouldn’t go near that ride again. Looking back now, that was very silly, but it makes for some funny memories. I can’t imagine being afraid of that ride today, instead, we’d tease each other about being scared of it.

Another tradition my family has is that everyone gets together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone brings food to someone’s house and we all hang out all day. Everyone ends up taking some food home. This last year we went to three different houses to celebrate thanksgiving. My whole immediate family went to each. Along with the other family there, there were a ton of people.

My family’s traditions are basically just hanging out any chance we get. We hang out on holidays, birthdays, special occasions, over the summer, on the weekends, during football days – all the time. I’m grateful that I have a family with these traditions. Hanging out with family on the weekends is beneficial for me. It’s like a reward after a hard week or like a cold glass of water on a hot day. It’s refreshing and helps me go into the new week. It helps me destress being with my family and the people who make me happy. It’s impacted my life because I get to spend the whole weekend with my best friends. I’m so close with a lot of my family because we hang out on the weekends. I honestly wouldn’t like my cousins very much if I didn’t see them all the time and grow up with them.