The Party Never Ends...

I know this is Thursday already, but the weekend and this week have gone by in a whirlwind of parties, cupcakes, lunches, and more cake. Thankfully, I am not just talking about my birthday anymore, though my parents planned a lovely lunch for the whole family on Sunday.

The Bigger Boys

We all met after Mass on Sunday at our favorite Mexican restaurant. It was a little crazy, 21 kids and 10 adults crammed into one section of the restaurant. I didn't even our servers. We kept them hopping! I am pretty sure we munched through a dozen baskets of chips and a gallon of salsa before our food arrived. The kids had sat all the way through Mass, and many of them religious ed. before that, so they were a bit rowdy - but not too bad.

We ate and talked and yelled at Littles to sit down and be quiet. Then they - they being my sisters and brother - as had been prearranaged,  decided to give a little summary of each of my decades, with my mom doing the last decade. This of course was funny, and sweet, and since my brother had the teen years, somewhat horrifying. He has a very long memory, at least when it comes to stuff I did wrong in my teen years. I was reminded of the mailbox massacre of the summer after I got my license. And the time I was stupid enough to put my sister in the trunk of the car because there was no room left in the actual car, I had packed it so full of passengers. I am pretty sure they said some nice stuff, too, but I was so consumed with guilt and horror over the bad things I had done as a teen, I can't remember what they were!
But, we laughed, I cried, we ate some cake.  I looked around at the faces in the room with me, marveling at how our little family of six has blossomed into a big extended family with almost 33 members.

                                                        I love every single one of them! Thanks to all of them for making my birthday so special, and so easy!