Special Edition: Cousin Camp
What happens when you put
1 great grandparent
2 grandparents
6 siblings and 4 spouses
20 grandchildren
in one home for a whole week?
THIS! (click to watch a magical two-minute recap)
We just wrapped up our first annual Aldous Family Cousin Camp and I’m still riding the high. Living in Singapore means we see family once a year, so we need to make it count.
With 33 people together for an entire week, I had lots of opportunities for asking questions. So instead of one question this week, I thought I’d give you a roundup of some questions I asked along the way.
What would success look like, sound like, and feel like?
Before we began planning activities, food, and themes, we thought about the overall goal and what it would look like, sound like, feel like if we ran a successful camp. I love using this framework because it makes things tangible.
What would success look like?
Cousins of all ages hanging out together (even beyond the planned activities)
Cousins giving high-five’s and hugs
Nieces, nephews, and grandkids talking with aunts, uncles, and grandparents
What would success sound like?
Cousins offering encouraging words to each other
Cousins laughing together
Cousins/adults saying they want to do this again
Cousins crying as they say goodbye (the good kind of tears)
What would success feel like?
Connection
Pride in trying new things
Sadness (when it ends)
How can you make this fun for someone else?
We did three activities each morning, opened it up for free time in the afternoon and then usually had an evening activity of some kind. We offered everything from ax throwing and archery to an escape room and polaroid photography challenge. There was something for everyone but it also meant that there were some activities that some kids were not as interested in.
At one point, I heard a comment from one of the kids about not wanting to do a certain activity because they weren’t good at it.
I pulled them aside for a quick second and said it was totally fine to not be interested in something and that in those moments I wanted them to ask this question, “how can you make this fun for someone else?”
Our theme for the camp was “team.” And our hope was that the cousins would find ways to support each other even when something wasn’t what they wanted to do.
What’s your next best option?
Feeding 32 people meant that eating outside was necessary to help us keep the house clean but Texas is experiencing some crazy heat wave at the moment so it’s 100+ degrees outside by the time we get to dinner.
We tried eating on the patio which became a literal sauna at times.
We tried eating on the lawn.
We moved picnic tables over to any available shade (this worked well)
Once we even laid blankets down in the house and had an indoor picnic.
The point is, not everything will always work out how you want so you’ve got to be flexible enough to roll with the next best option in the moment.
What’s important now?
If you know my mom, you know she will remind you of Monica from Friends—literally the cleanest most organized person I know.
With 30 people in your home, it would have been easy to focus everything on the logistics of tidying and lose sight of the purpose of the event. Mom focused on the grandkids, helped run several sessions, spent time floating in the pool and chatting, and still made sure things stayed relatively clean.
When running an event like this, it’s easy to get lost in any/all of the logistics so it’s important to continually ask yourself, “what’s important now?”
What are the little touches you can add to make this feel polished?
When you’re doing something DIY, you want to look for the little touches you can add that make the experience feel “put together.” This is how you move your event from feeling like something homemade and feeling like something professional.
There were a few things we tried to do to add a touch of polish to our DIY event.
A daily printed schedule was posted in the living room. This piece of paper outlined everything taking place and who was in each group for the day.
T-shirts were passed out at the start of the camp. Our theme was team and we had each shirt printed with the letter “A” on it to symbolize the shared team we are all part of “Aldous.”
Cups with each kid’s name on it were distributed at the very beginning. This helped in two ways—first it kept us from flying through plastic cups and second it stopped any arguments over who got which color cup.
On the final day we gave each cousin a small wooden circle with the letter “A” on it and their name on the back. Then we had them use the wood like a yearbook and they all signed their names on each other's piece of wood.
What will you do differently next time?
Everything is a learning experience if we’re willing to pause long enough to reflect.
Everyone is already excited about coming back next year to do this again and we’ve already made a shortlist of things we can improve.
Set a start time for dinner and the other evening activities instead of leaving it open-ended
Be more detailed in our menu planning
Be more thoughtful about messaging. We planned activities but we could have done more with incorporating the messages we wanted to highlight along the way.
We capped the camp activities to ages 5+ which meant we had about 6 kids who were too young to join us. Next year we need to plan out the toddler activities better so parents aren’t left trying to figure out what to do with our youngest cousins each day.
What do you want to remember about this moment?
The excitement of kids waiting to see the new schedule for the day being posted. Kids asking if we can do more activities in the evening. Kids talking at full speed about the activity they just finished. This whole week is a core memory I’m gonna hold onto ❤️
I never would have guessed when this whole asking project began that years later I would be more invested in it than I was at the beginning. I wish I was better at capturing just how valuable this whole process has been for me and what I think it can do for everyone. That’s the beauty of this - you can do it with nothing. You need no money, no higher education—you need nothing more than a willingness to ask a question AND pause long enough to go beyond your default answer.
Please, just try it this week. I don’t even care what question you ask. Ask something, give yourself the space to reflect on it, and step back to see how this process could impact your entire life.
Keep Asking,
Kyle