Our Cousin Adoption Ceremony

The real highlight of this year's Christmas Eve party was the Cousin Adoption Ceremony that we decided to hold in the basement. Even though we aren't cousins by blood, we've all gotten to be close and we think of each other as family. True to our crazy selves, we decided that at some point we needed to have an official ceremony so that we could legitimately call one another cousins. After discussing many crazy and intricate aspects of the ceremony, we stuck with our bags of dirt and goblet. Unfortunately, some of the "going-to-be adopted" cousins couldn't be there, so we're planning the planting portion (and possibly other crazy additions) of the ceremony during warmer weather.

Bags of dirt ready to be poured into our vase.

We gathered around our dirt,

then someone started singing?

Krissy was the official master of ceremonies.

Mostly due to her love of Harry Potter and ability to sound all "churchy".
She asked us a ton of questions. She's hilarious!

There was conveniently a candle on the counter that we proceeded to light so we could dim the lights.

It is very difficult to take pictures while laughing with very little light.

Each family added their dirt to the vase.

Krissy then "blessed" each of us on the top of the head, with the fly swatter,

and we all drank from the goblet.

We added the leftover contents of the goblet to the dirt.

COUSINS!!!!!

(I hope Gina got a better photo of us! It was supposed to be adult-free, but she snuck down with her camera while we were setting the timer.)

This was seriously the best ceremony that I have ever been a part of! I can't even really remember everything that Krissy said, but it was great! Even though everyone else will probably think we're crazy, the ceremony was awesome and now we can officially say we're cousins!