More Toronto: Lots of Cousins

Gordon has a pretty big family. If we just focus on his Mom's side for now - his Mom has four sisters and one brother. They all have at least one child. So he's got nine first cousins, to my three. (Of course my first cousins are ALSO my second cousins... so there's that - I'll let you think about that one for a bit. Here's a hint though: it's totally "ok" - and not icky weird).

And of course now the cousins are getting married and having kids. Gordon's grandmother, Pau Pau, currently has 11 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren (and one more on the way!). During the weekend of Mabel's wedding she was surrounded by 8 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. It's such a rare treat for us to have (nearly) everyone in one place so Fred and Julie graciously hosted us all over their house the day after the wedding for a huge chaotic cousin playdate. Mabel and Von were sweet enough to put off their honeymoon for a day or two and came to hang out as well. (SUCH a good idea - if we were getting married again I'd totally schedule a little more post-wedding time to see family and friends before jetting off).

Lily was super thrilled to get to spend some quality time with Mabel. And by quality time I mean time spent hanging on her every word (literally, hanging):

Quinn managed to log some time with the newlyweds too though:

Idela (Kevin's wife) with their two boys, Leroy and Rosario:

Later that day there was a Chinese banquet. Lily was pretty psyched about that affair because it meant that she got to see Mabel in her beautiful red Chinese dress again and could log some more time chasing Owen around.

Here's the entire Chen family - our gracious hosts for the weekend:

Fred looking slightly less energetic than his son Owen:

and then chilling at the end of the night with Lily:

That last picture reminds me of another Lily story from the weekend. While planning for the trip I had to get Lily a number of dresses for all the different events. I found the dress she wore to the wedding at a local children's boutique. It's this adorable Tea Collection dress from their "West Africa" collection. Lily's not all that into having her picture taken, so of course I don't have a good one to show you. Anyway, she hated the dress - hated it. She hated it because it's white and light pink and she absolutely hates wearing the color white - refuses in fact to wear it. It doesn't matter if a shirt or pants has tons of color on it - if the background is white then it's a no go.

At first I was going to return the dress and go get her another one. But then I realized that... well she's 3. And while I want her to express her sense of style and yadda yadda yadda - I also am pretty busy and didn't have time to get all that returning and re-buying done before the trip. Instead I decided to use the opportunity to talk about compromise. I bought her a hot pink shrug to lessen the affront of the white dress and let her choose her own dress from the Tea Collection web site to wear to the Chinese banquet. The dress she chose is the one she's wearing in the picture with Fred. And if you can't really see it there, it's this one. All in all the dress saga worked out pretty well. She wore the dress I bought her to the wedding and was really excited to wear her dress choice to the Chinese banquet. I have to say that I think she did a pretty good job picking one out.

OK well sorry for that side-bar - clearly I'm not posting here enough so the stories are getting all jumbled together. The point of this post is to say that we love our Canadian cousins: Fred & Julie, Kevin & Idela, Mabel & Von, Justin, Matt, and Leslie and are so glad that we got to spend time with them. We hope someone else gets married soon so we can do it again! Oh - and next time guys? let's make sure we get a big cousins picture taken. And also: Gabe & Que, Emma and Evan - you need to be there too!