It’s important to make immediate and extended family a priority. To make the time to allow cousins to get to know one another. There is something about roots and family history and having blood relatives in our lives that enriches us. who will be with us through it all. Family are those 
people whom we know will stick with us through thick and thin. That is what family should be.
You choose your friends while you are given your family. Friends come and go but your family will always be there.
Family should be comfort and healing and a safe place for our kids. A place where they are always accepted. Always valued. Always important. A place where they belong. Like home.
My parents both grew up in Germany and so my extended family lived across the ocean so I did not get the chance to see them very often. But, I still learned the value of the importance of family. My parents made it a priority to give us the gift of traveling to Europe. We may have had minimal Christmases but we got to go to Germany to see our family
and to get to know our cousins.
My mom was an only child so it was her mom that I mostly got to know on her side of the family, along with my second cousin Helga. My dad was one of five children and all of his siblings had kids, who were my cousins, whom I got to spend time with when we traveled to Germany. To this day, we are connected with our cousins in Germany; and my daughter who lives in Germany with her husband gets to see our extended family on a regular basis.
Now that all of us kids are married with kids as are my husband’s siblings, we have the chance to make sure that our kids get to know their cousins. Life gets busy and it is not always easy to make sure it happens. You have to be intentional about it.
My kids see some of their cousins more than others and I want to continue to work on having my kids see their other cousins more often. Like the other day, 
we called up my sister and asked if we could bring bagels and cream cheese by for their family. It was spontaneous. The summer is off and running and Ive been trying to find a way to get the cousins together for a day outing, but it hasn’t happened. So, we made it an hour and a half get together. Just taking the time to connect. I loved seeing the cousins interacting and connecting.
And, within my own large family, I work at always making sure we make family a priority. With two of our kids married and living out of the house, I try to invite them over as often as possible, to help nurture closeness.
I remember going to my husband’s parents’ house each week for dinner when my husband and I were newly married, and I try to duplicate that idea in our family.
And it is my hope and prayer that my kids would see the priority we give to our family and that they would follow that value as they go on to have families of their own.
The older the children (and their children) get, the harder it is to get everyone together. That is why it is so important to make a conscious effort to stay connected. Keep up the good work Cornelia, and thanks for sharing.