What is family? Yes, your family is your parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-great-great-great-great-grandparents from the 1700s with names like Erastus and Matilda. It's your spouse, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and your great-great-great-great-grandchildren's children, too. It's the people who came before you and those who will come after you. But in my mind, family is so much more than that.

Family isn't just a group of people. It's a lifestyle. It's riding bikes in the park on a cool autumn day, feeling as free as a bird. It's cracking bizarre jokes that often make no sense whatsoever, but laughing anyways. It's watching cheesy Disney movies and quoting every single line. It's blasting 80s music at full volume with the windows rolled down and belting the lyrics at the top of your lungs as you drive down the street in the family car. It's traveling to exotic places for summer vacation or to the local mall for the afternoon. It's waking up early on Christmas morning and sprinting down the stairs the very second the clock hits 7:30. It's eating dinner together after a long day at school, even though you're ready to crash. It's baking batches upon batches of sugar cookies that you know you'll never be able to eat, but making them anyways, just because you can. It's walking outside at sunset in Arizona and feeling the warm air press against your skin. It's hopping barefoot along the scorching sand at the beach in California, trying to reach the water before your feet burn up. It's strolling aimlessly around a quaint historic village in England, just enjoying the medieval buildings and beautiful scenery without a care in the world.

Family is the constant comfort of knowing that no matter where you are or what you do, you'll always have a few annoying yet kinda-sorta-awesome people to call your own.