Declarations of a King: Cousin-Sisters

Today is my cousin-sister's birthday! I am one of those ridiculously lucky people to have cousins who happen to double as my best friends/siblings. I feel like I am pretty close to all my amazing cousins, but there were three of them that fell right around my age and lived 20 minutes away during my childhood. Those three lucky ducks got to experience the treat that was my sister and I.

Can I say one tiny snippet about how home sick the Milks make me?! I mean, goodness gracious, all I want to do is be in the Riv this weekend eating crazy cake, Papa John's pizza, staying up late to watch Psych or Mentalist episodes that the Milks were kind enough to record for Sel and I, and then dragging my exhausted self out of bed to go to Zumba with Mugs.

Okay, back to why the Milks actually added a sister and two brothers to our tiny family of four.

We went through it all together. We fought with one another on a weekly basis. We freaked out on one anothers birthdays cause we weren't getting presents and attention too. We can't pretend those terribly awkward, chubby, bad haircut years didn't happen cause we were all there together to live it up; We have some very unfortunate pictures to prove it. We went on King/Milk vacations which meant every single minute of our day was rigidly planned out from 6:00am to 9:00pm. We learned to appreciate the great outdoors together while we got eaten by mosquitoes on camping, hiking, and fishing trips. We went to all the Wanda Ramas together, had roll eating contests (Matt won pretty much every time), and traded candy cups like pirates. My childhood would have been so unrecognizable without the Milks.

The greatest part about my relationship with the whole Milk family was how ten years of living away from them didn't even put a dent in our close relationship..in fact, it probably helped a whole heck of a lot because I was a freggin terror when I was little. They called me Wendy Whiner when I was little. Obviously not A LOT changed, but that just shows you how grand I was back in the day.
They re-adopted me when I moved back to Utah for school and then Mugs honestly became one of my best friends I've ever had. She has such a take charge attitude about her. Any issue I had, she devised a genius plan to take care of it. I've mentioned before how she pretty much took on the role of wedding planner when Sel and I got married. She handled EVERYTHING. Pictures, flowers, dresses, my bachelorette party, invitations, and of course, those really great breakdowns of mine. Last year, I convinced her she should be a crazy runner so then we trained for two halfs together and survived them. Now she is rockin the running world and has like 6 halfs scheduled for 2014. She got me hooked on fro-yo before fro-yo became "the thang" of Utah County. We've just done a whole darn lot together and it's lame that I won't see her face for what feels like forever. Living in Toledo has been super great, but also sooo hard. I miss the Milks even more than the mountains (so you know how big a deal that is). So, if you are in Utah and you know Mugs (and even if you don't cause she loves strangers ;), you should give her a grand old hug today cause I am stuck out in T-town missing that crazy girl. (Here goes a HUGE picture overload)