Your Cousins Are Coming!   Cayla Morgan     © Copyright 2004 by Cayla Morgan

 Usually, most people’s January ends with the last snowball fight or the last run on the sled before the snow starts to
get wet and melt into February. Well, not my January 2003.  At the end of January my mom had some shocking news for my dad, my brother and me. She said my cousins from Utah were coming to live with us while my uncle Joe shipped off to Kuwait with the U.S. Air Force.

In the short week we had before Ryan and Julianne came, we accomplished a lot. Not only did I cram another bed and another dresser into my room, but also my brother got a bunk bed made for his room in less than a week. We stocked the house with food and everything my cousins would need. Then we were off to the airport in Minnesota on an early Sunday morning.

When we got to the airport, the first thing we did was go through the metal detectors. After we got past the metal detectors and reclaimed our things, we checked on Ryan and Julianne’s flight. They weren’t due in for another 90 minutes, so we had plenty of time to find them. When we got to where we thought they were going to be dropped
off, the whole area was closed off. My mom was confused so she went up to a security guard and said, “ Where can
we find the flight coming in from Denver to Minneapolis?”

 The security guard took us in a completely different direction. When we finally got to the right place, we had about
40 minutes to spare. In that time, we went to some souvenir stands to look at key chains and snow globes that had ‘Minnesota’ printed on them. Finally, the flight from Denver to Minneapolis got in.

 Since I hadn’t seen my cousins since the summer, I was a little nervous. I think they were worried that we weren’t going to show up. My older cousin, Ryan, was more excited to see us than 11-year-old Julianne was. She’d always
been a little shy. When we finally got to the luggage drop off, we waited and waited. After it went around about 20 times, my cousin Ryan said, “ I think that bag is ours.”

 Ryan also said that there were only two more bags. When we found those bags, we were off.

 On the way home, we made little conversation about how their flight was and what they were going to be doing
while they were staying with us. There was small conversation between Julianne, and me but Ryan and my brother, Cody, were chatting up a storm. When we finally got home, we all went upstairs to help unpack and be ready for
school the next day. My mom, on the other hand, had something else up her sleeve.

 “A chore chart!”

 “Already!”

 It was Ryan and Julianne’s first day here, and they already had a place on the chore chart.  Ryan said, “ We do a lot more chores at home.”

 “Dad makes us clean the house and do the laundry and cook!”

 “This is hardly anything!”

 My cousins did their chores without complain. For now.

 On Monday when my mom drove us all to school, everybody was saying,

“Who are those kids?”

 “What are they doing here?”

 I said they were my cousins and they were coming to live with my family and me for a while. At the end of the day,
I asked Julianne if she had made any friends and she said there were so many that she couldn’t even remember all of their names.

 For about a week everything was running smoothly. By Saturday, Ryan and Julianne said they didn’t have any other clothes. They couldn’t pack a lot in such a short notice.  We had to go to Rice Lake to buy them some more clothes.
My cousin Julianne went to go stay with my Grandma who lives in Hayward, so she went shopping there to get some clothes. Then everything was running smoothly again.

 Have you ever had someone around for a while and you got sick of him or her?  Well, that’s what was happening to me. After about three weeks of my cousins sharing my house with me, I was getting a little stressed. I had no privacy, my cousin Ryan was being mean to Julianne and me, and my brother thought he could do the same.  Finally, my mom got so sick of all the arguing, that one Saturday she sent Ryan and Julianne to my grandma’s house. When we arrived
on Sunday night to pick up Ryan and Julianne, my grandma had all of my mom’s favorite food cooked and ready to
eat. Of course, we had to stay. My grandma even bought a bunch of food to help us out. After all since we had Ryan living with us, we needed all the help we could get. He said back in Utah for breakfast he had eggs, pancakes, toast, sausage, and even cereal for one breakfast.

 One day in early February, we got a call from my Uncle Joe. He said he was back in Utah. We weren’t expecting
him back so early. He was supposed to come home in about another three weeks.  At the end of the week my
cousins were leaving.  My uncle said he was flying my cousins home.  My grandma said she would to my cousins
to Minnesota to the airport in the middle of the night. The next morning when I woke up, I could not believe Ryan
and Julianne were actually gone. Just yesterday we were arguing about whose turn it was to do the dishes. Now the arguing was over because there were two less people to argue with.

 It was fun having my cousins come and stay with us for a month.  If anybody asked me if I would do it again I would probably say no.  You never realize how nice it is with one family in your house until you have two families living
with you.

Cayla Morgan is an aspiring young writer.  Her story was submitted by Mrs. Kiersten Hullander,
her 7th grade Language Arts Teacher

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