Perfectly Imperfect

I can't lie to you people. I wish I could, but I can't. I try to pretend my family is on the normal side of average. But no. I try to cover up our dysfunction. It's no use. We are positively abnormal. Except, what family is normal? What is considered normal these days? So, maybe your family is abnormal, making my family look like sweet kittens comparatively. For example, pictured above...my brother wanted to make it look like he was eating our nephew's head. But, I digress.

My weekend started out well enough. I went to visit Tori at her farm for our anuual weekend Halloween Extravaganza. It includes some pumpkin carving, Halloween movie watching, baking, and general merriment. One year while we were still in college, we began this tradition with some of our girlfriends. Our movie of choice? Sleepy Hollow. The one with Johnny Depp. Big mistake. It's awful. No, no. Worse than awful. We thought the Johnny Depp/Tim Burton thing would make it worthy of our time, but we were sadly mistaken. In fact, I had already seen it and I distinctly remember telling Tori that we should choose another movie, but she hadn't seen it...

This year we chose Practical Magic. Instead of carving pumpkins (the pumpkin patch was CLOSED), we baked some cupcakes from scratch. Take note friends...it's the humble beginnings of the cupcake store I plan to own and operate someday called "All About Sprinkles" or "The Cute Cupcake", or something equally as charming.

Anyways, I was telling you about my dysfunctionally functional family. I have 7 nieces and nephews and all of them have birthdays (well, who doesn't?). So that's 7 months out of 12, about 58% of the year, we are having a party. My sister-in-law, whom I love, is a party queen. She has created these elaborate parties since her kids were in the womb. And, it gets worse. She has to out do herself every stinkin' year, which will soon become impossible unless we start shuttling the children to outer space at one of these Baldwin Shingdigs. I fear the years to come.


This was last year's "donut game". It was so last season. My brother-in-law, goin at it.

Every time one of these parties is over, you can hear Sarah say "Yeah, I don't think I am going to do a party like this again." Haha. Just wait. She has placed herself in her very own conundrum. Her own little crazy Catch 22. She can't give one of her children a crazy party and then forget the other two. Except, I think poor Lucas has not had a birthday party in two years (he's the middle child, go figure).

So, I had to get there early to man my "station".

...um yes, I said "station".

There were five stations, each manned by a family member. This was not including the pinata that had to be smacked, presents that had to be opened, and cake that had to be eaten.

The stations were as follows:

1) moonbounce

2) bobbing for apples

3) caramel dipping

4) face painting

5) art project (magnet making)

Oh. Did I mention she invites the entire neighborhood?

Yes. The whole block.

There were about 20 some children.

Then there is my brother, Timmy. Sweet. Wonderful. Compulsively clean Timmy. He abhores messes. He hates loud romping. He loathes chaos in any form. He despises uncleanliness. You can imagine that one of these parties is everything he dreams of...and more.

Yes. In his nightmares.

My brother has a real problem with compulsively cleaning. You think I am kidding? At one time I lived with Timmy and his family. I left my coffee on the counter, walked upstairs to grab something, and came back for my coffee literally 45 seconds later and my coffee had been dumped. Also, I would leave to go somewhere and realizing I forgot to grab something, I would come back to get it, leaving my keys strewn on the counter by the door. Gone in 60 seconds. By the time I went to grab whatever I forgot and came back to my keys, they had already been nicely tucked away into the key box.

All this to say, Tori had fixed a plate of food at the party, placed it on the kitchen counter. Left it for like 30 seconds, only to come back to nothing. She doesn't think Timmy threw it out, but I submit he did. He's like Flash!

Anywho, then we have Sarah's cooking which is rumored to be Food Network worthy in 48 out 50 states. She is an amazing cook. I am blessed to be called her sous chef. She taught me a lot of what I know. The day before the party, she calls me in a frenzy because she didn't think she had made enough food. Now granted, it was far less than she normally makes, but still there was so much food left over she was sending the adults home with a goodie bag of their own. Let me list what was offered:

hot dogs

vegetarian chili

fruit plate (with pomegranate)

veggie plate

spinach and artichoke dip

chips and dip

brownies

cake

potoato skins

pasta salad

Then there were the already crazed, hyped up on sugar children running to and fro. My station was the caramel dipping. After the kids bobbed for apples, they dipped the apple in caramel and then rolled it around in chocolate chips and sprinkles. Perfectly messy. Yummy. But messy. Then I had these two little hoarders that lingered around the table to lick up any of the excess caramel that had dripped off of the apples onto the cookie sheets. And these were the oldest kids at the party!!! We had to cut them off.

Reid eating straight up sprinkles...

Then there was the face painting fiasco. Sarah didn't think through the whole painted faces being dunked into a tub of water at the bobbing for apples station, so we had a bunch of children running around looking like little zombies with smudged faces. Sheesh.

But you know what? I wouldn't trade these memories for anything in the world because it's my family. It's fun. We are unique. We love parties. We love food. We love to laugh. We love to go behind guests and check for ring spots on the wooden funiture with a paper towel. We love the after party when we sit down in the quiet house with a cup of coffee and discuss the details of the day with each other. It makes the day so worth it.