To my cousin,

Every Christmas Eve you have lived for has been spent in our granny’s house. We have eaten food from Martin's and begged to open presents “nooooow” each and every year.

You and I don’t have memories of big home cooked meals and I promise you never will, at least not from our Granny. But I promise a smile will always come across your face when you think about Granny taking store bought food and putting it in her own dishes to make it “feel” homemade. I may be the only college kid out there that craves restaurant food more than a home cooked meal.

I wish I had had someone to remind me to soak in the memories when I was your age, right now you don’t realize that this won’t all last forever. What you really don’t realize is that one day, we won’t have a Granny to put Martin's food into crock pots for us.

Enjoy this time. Its full of laughter and innocence. My childhood Christmas Eve memories are wonderful. I will never forget the one where I got my very own princess sofa. Boy, did I think I was hot stuff. I kept it in my closet for months because I was determined to have a dressing room just like Hannah Montana did.

Don’t you love how Santa always just so happens to have “stopped by” just for us, one night early? I know I do. Santa still comes for me, even though I’m in college and I will never stop loving it. I used to think it was silly and sometimes I would think that Granny was losing it. But I know that when it stops, I’ll miss it more than I can even begin to express.

One very unfortunate day, you will realize that Santa isn’t real, that mom and dad were always the ones setting the presents out, dad was the one putting things together in the garage, and Granny’s handwriting wasn’t on the gift tags from Santa because she was “one of the elves”.

It may take years for you to realize this but I promise at some point you will. That Christmas Eve was never about the gifts and the food. It was about the love and the happiness and all the memories we were in the process of making. I’m so thankful for you and all the happiness you’ve brought to me. You bring a new life to Christmas and I can’t thank you enough for that.

I hope that you appreciate every moment of these years. Never take them for granted. It’ll be us running Christmas Eve one day. I hope we can do it justice. I hope that one day our kids and our grandkids will have as much love for us as we do for our Granny and our parents. We are so very lucky and I hope you never forget that.

Never lose sight of what Christmas is all about and never forget the donut reindeer and the shrimp platter from Martins. Cherish these moments, soak in the memories, be grateful for the love that is shared between all of us. But most importantly, always hug your Granny extra tight and say an extra thank you when she forces you to eat bananas- even though you don’t like them. One day you’ll miss this, I promise.

Love always,

Your cousin