Sixteen? Really?

It's just like me to plan a party and not ever really think about how many people are coming. Turns out there were sixteen of us. Well, sixteen and a half.

I don't know why this number is so surprising to me. True, we've never all been in the same place at the same time before. Ever. But it's not like there were long lost relatives that I'd never heard of before, all coming out of the woodwork for a beer and some barbecue. I was fully aware of the existence of all sixteen before they planted their butts in chairs in our living room. I'd never before thought of them in the aggregate, though. My parents, all of my siblings, their spouses, and all of their kids. Sixteen. And a half. I dig it.

There wasn't that much planning for this party, though. At least not on our part. We made sure the house was clean, bought beer and snack foods, and chopped up veggies from the garden for pre-dinner munching. The Old Folks (as I like to call them) brought additional seating, an inflatable pool, and a chest of squirt guns and toys for the grandkids. Pops (a.k.a. THWAM) even brought his own pump, inflated and filled the pool, drained and deflated it, and folded it all back up into the trunk of his car. Big Brother and family brought a pitcher of sangria, a gorgeously presented fruit salad they dubbed "Pineapple Extravaganza," and two giant boxes of Rudy's. That's my kind of party planning. If you can invite a bunch of people to your house and get them to do all the work, I highly recommend it.

It all went off without a hitch. The cadet was released from the Air Force Academy a day later than expected, but they changed her flight so she flew straight into Austin, and a contingent of the family met her at the airport and had her back to our place in plenty of time to regale us all with tales of glider flight and paint-pellet war games. She even brought show-and-tell material.

I think my favorite moments were:

1. Chatting through Sunday breakfast with my nephew, with whom I've had very little contact before. He was friendly and outgoing, and even found common interests (video games!) about which he could chat with me, for which I was grateful. I'm not always great with the small talk. He described himself as silly, and said one of his pastimes is cheering people up on the internet, because there are a lot of grumpy people on the internet. And there are. He even unwisely gave me an original piece of art. I say unwisely because he was lobbying hard for $30 for a new video game, and I easily could've been convinced to buy his artwork from him. But it all worked out, because he managed to hustle his mother at pool Sunday afternoon, and won the $30 off her.

2. Post-breakfast photo shoot. It's fun making surly teenagers pose for pictures. Mrs. Rodius was wrangled into the group shot of the grandkids, so Thumper would be represented. And Mrs. Rodius is herself a very useful person to have around when there's a goal to be accomplished, like getting sixteen people to stand together and look in the same direction while pictures are taken. As I've mentioned, she's the world's most capable woman.

And despite a few rough rapids in the river of our family history, there were no awkward or unpleasant moments, excepting the usual and expected teenaged surliness, which is understandable to those of us who can still dimly remember how hard it was to be both utterly bored by the adult conversation and utterly above the squirt-gun shenanigans of your younger cousins. And when you're underaged and vegetarian, even beer and barbecue hold no delights. Thank God for the iPod. So we were together through Saturday afternoon and evening, Sunday breakfast, and Sunday afternoon at Main Event, all without anyone fighting, sulking (again, teenagers excepted), or swearing never to speak to each other again. That's pretty good for family, right?

So thanks, Family, and I hope we get to do it again soon, after we've bumped our numbers up to seventeen!