The other day I was sitting at the dinner table with all of my cousins, laughing and having a great time. Every time there’s a family holiday there’s always this discussion of “the kid’s table.” Getting moved up from the kid’s table to the dining room with the adults has always seemed like some massive accomplishment. In my family, it means you’ve made it.

This Easter our tune changed. We were all getting ready to stake out the perfect seat when we realized something about the kid’s table. It’s not really a kid’s table anymore. We’re basically all adults. We all get to use the fine china and drink from fancy water glasses, nobody needs help cutting their ham, and the language filter is still there because it’s a family event, but some words do slip out and nobody at the table winces and tries to cover little ears.

We sit and talk about jobs, friends, relationships, concerts, vacations, and parties. Some of us are living in cities, some in dorms, and a few are still in high school. We talk about plans for the future. Some of us are job hunting and trying to figure out what the heck we are doing with our lives, others are trying to figure out where to go to college.

After brunch, the moms insisted we take a cousin photo (which of course I promptly posted to Instagram). As I was staring at this photo on my phone I noticed how much older we all look. Then, I had a really scary thought.

We are the next generation, which means we are the future of our family.

Before we know it, it will be us hosting Easter. We will have our own homes, our own jobs, our own set of traditions. We will be voters, we will be taxpayers, we will have bills, some of us already do. We cook our own food and do our own shopping (most of the time). We are all grown up.

I think this is the first year ever that we’ve had everyone be excited to sit at the kid’s table because now it’s really just a table of adults who have the most fun. Heck, our parents even kept crashing the kid’s table party we had going on.

I am so grateful to have so many amazing cousins. It’s always a good time when we’re together and I know that can’t be said for a lot of cousins. We all get along and we genuinely love to spend time together.

Someday the kid’s table will be resurrected, but when that happens we won’t be the ones sitting at it. We will sit in the dining room with fine china and a few bottles of wine while our own children run around arguing about who will get to graduate from the kid’s table first.

We will look at them and laugh as we remember what it was like to feel so old and yet be so young. We will tell stories about the time we are living now, and our kids will look at us in disbelief. They will deny that we were ever the fun kid’s table and they will want to grow up too fast. There will be just as much love, the food will be just as good, and the laughter will be louder than ever.

It’s scary to think about how fast time is moving, but I’m just glad I get to spend that time with the family I have, regardless of what table we sit at.