Personal Narrative: My Trip To Kansas

Cousins Camp Every other year over the summer, my grandparents from Kansas come out to Illinois. They pick up my sister and I, and also my 4 other cousins. (the younger half of the cousins) We always leave the parents at home, and that is not all! On the way to Kansas, we usually stop at an Amish store and buy 1-2 bushels of fresh Georgia peaches!! Georgia peaches are delicate, delicious, and delightful. Soon, we are on our way again. Before we know it, it is time to eat our supper. This year, we stopped at Freddy's in Kansas City. All of us cousins know when we are almost to my Grandparents farm, because in the distance we can see my Grandpas silos! When we arrived at their house, we all stepped out of the van knowing that Cousins Camp has
just begun. It thrilled us to know that we would be smelling the crisp and fresh Kansas air, while riding the fourwheeler around the farm or doing many other things outside. The time was around 8:00, so with very little light left, all of us cousins ran down to some hay bales and had races of jumping down and back the haybales. When we got back, my grandma got out some of her amazing melt-in-your-mouth homemade chocolate chip cookies, while my grandpa whipped up some root beer floats.The floats cooled my dry throat. I could not resist eating both because they were calling my name! It was so refreshing after running around in humid weather! All of us could feel and see the sweat on our bodies.
Throughout the week, we did all kinds of fun activities.
One day we went to the Burlington pool and swam for 3 hours! Over the weeks timespan, we went to Burlington pool 3 times. We all had so much fun, even though every one of us got fried from the sun! My Grandma told us we all were like fish in the water! My Grandparents always try to take us to, or do things we all would enjoy. One of the biggest, and most fun things we did that week, was go tubing behind a boat! We had 2 tubes, so 4 of us could be tubing at one time. My grandparents just bought a tube that day for us to use. The one they bought was more flat like a pancake, so you had to use your muscles and lift the front end up the whole time. If you were not doing that the whole time, you would go under the water. When we were done tubing, we all ate at a picnic table close to the lake. Another thing we did that week was make our own t-shirts. My Grandma would give us the right size of shirt we needed, and we would decorate the front of it with whatever we wanted to. At the end of each, day all of us cousins took turns taking a shower. My sister would always wrap the towel around her hair and use the towel like a turban. One of my boy cousins asked her why she did that, and she told him it made her hair dry faster. Well, being the genius he is, he decided to try it for himself… he quickly found out that his short hair does not dry faster in a turban! Before my grandparents made us go downstairs and go to bed, they
always told us a story or two about when they were growing up. My Grandma would always only tell 1-2, but when my Grandpa would tell a story, it would always lead into another one!
The main, big thing that happened in the week of Cousins Camp, was a meal that all of us cousins served to other people that went to my Grandparents church.
None of them were strangers to us because we have known every one of them since we were little. Throughout the whole week, we would begin to prep the food for when the big night came. My Grandpa has a nice size pond that has a bunch of catfish in it. He feeds the fish, and so one night, all of us cousins decided we really wanted to go with him. We all piled in the back of the farms truck, and headed down the gravel road and through the cow pasture to get to the pond. We all stood along the shore, ready for him to through in the food. The moment he through the food in there, the water turned white, because the catfish were flopping around in the water trying to get a mouthful of food. We brought a good size net with us, so my cousin put the net in the water and caught a fish. Later, we got in the truck again and drove down the gravel road 2 miles to my Uncle and Aunt's house. There, my Grandpa filleted the fish because we were going to use it for our meal. We cut the stomach open and saw the last meal he ate… fish food. We all looked at each other and gave a maybe-we-should-not-have-cut-it-open look. All of us cousins agreed that we wanted to act like we owned a restaurant. We came up with a theme for our meal, and we all decided that we would like to do a fishing theme. The name of our restaurant was “Cousinsville
Cafe”. My Grandma and Aunt made our “uniforms”. Our “uniform” was a blue shirt that said “Cousins Camp” in black lettering. Then they added a fishing pole, tackle box, a fish, and a sign that said “Cousinsville Property”. For our bottoms, we all just wore jeans, and us girls rolled them up. The night of the meal we sat the people down at a table, handed them a menu, and took their orders. Everything on the menu was homemade, except for the chips. After the meal, us Grandkids did a little skit of pastime cousins camp themes we had done. After everything was done, 3 of my cousins and I went out for a run. Then after we ran, all of us went to jump hay bales outside. Having a race across the hay bales was always something we did while. Racing on the hay bales, we never walked, and we never stopped. We never wanted to lose the race. We were so tired we thought were were going to die! One of the last days of cousins camp, my Grandma gave us a tour of their dairy. (even though we already knew where everything was) She gave us the tour because they are retired dairy farmers. The next day before we got in the van to travel home, we all realized that Cousins Camp has come to an end. We took one last look around the farm, thinking of all the fun things we had done. With one last whiff of the crisp Kansas air, we climbed into the van. All of the cousins who did not live in Kansas traveled back to Illinois. We had a really fun week in Kansas!