The Original Five

I have a large family on my dad's side. There's about forty grandchildren. That's okay, we love it. I love my family, but I definitely preferred spending time with them when I was younger. We used to have so much fun. And whenever we got together we would always beg our parents to let us have sleepovers with each other. Since our family was so large we would form smaller groups of similar aged, same gender cousins that we would always play with. The group I was in consisted of Jessica, our leader in a sense, everyone would always want to be around her, she was definitely my favorite cousin; Nicole, the more creative one, with the ideas that were normally turned down; Kendra, the oldest; Haley, the youngest; and me.
Jessica, Nicole, and I are all the same age. Nicole and I were born in '93 and Jessica was born in '94 but only a couple of months after Nicole and I. We would always play with each other, the first few years of my life. Eventually Kendra, who's a year older then us, started to play with us too. And Haley, who lived the closest to Jessica (at the time) joined our group too, despite the fact that she was actually four years younger then us.
The five of us had a ton of fun together. This is a memoir. I'll try to keep it in order and tell everything I know about each memory, but since I have a selective memory, this might be difficult.
My oldest memory is of Nicole's Teddy Bear party. I don't remember how old she was turning, I believe it was four or five. I don't actually remember a lot about this. I do, though, remember how we played a mean game of musical chairs and pinned something to a bear.
My next memories are mostly of sleepovers. This is where most of the fun was, anyway. We mostly always went to Jessica's house. That, for some reason, was our favorite gathering place. Jessica's little brother, Nate, always wanted to play with us. Sometimes we would let him, sometimes we wouldn't. One time we played with him, we made him the bad guy, who was holding us captive, as we tried to escape.
These kind of games weren't rare. There was a park near Jessica's house. We occasionally went over there to play. One of the games we played was the "Sisters of Potassium." At the time we had no clue what potassium was. We just thought it was a cool name. I believe as the sister of potassium our goal was to find water as we made our journey through the land (we were thirsty and none of the drinking fountains were on.)
A lot of my memories also come from family reunions. Like the time we played Truth or Dare/Spin the Bottle (trust me, it was a clean game) in Goblin Valley. Or the time that we went down to Aspen Grove and played in the golf course (Jessica has a good story about this, I won't tell it because it's hers). There was even the time that we stayed in a hotel (don't remember where) and got way too hyper and Nicole's sister threatened to use karate against us unless we stayed quiet and went to sleep.
One of my closest memories is going to Disneyland with this group. We went on a lot of different rides. From making fun of Haley for her height (personal thanks for Haley for being such a good sport) to riding "Atlantis" this trip was a exciting one. Even when bad things happened we still walked away with good memories and a good time.
Eventually as time moved on, so did we. Our group got larger, it started to include cousins that were male and cousins not only four years younger then us, but up to nine years younger then us. The group got too big. I refer to when only five of us were together as the "Original Five."
This doesn't mean we still don't love each other. This doesn't mean we're no longer enjoy being with each other. This story, these memories, they don't have a sad ending. We're still cousins, we still see each other. We're just not as close.