OK, here you are folks, my first blog in what…3 weeks? I’ve been creatively stifled by my job, and I was all excited to write about this past weekend, and I got to work and was immediately CRUSHED by my boss…but I am going to try anyway. (and no, I wasn’t originally going to do this at work, but…well, I’m broken, so what the hell)

I had my big family reunion last weekend. It required approximately 3 days of preparation, from buying snacks and drinks to supplement us in the hotel, to making sure we had money and gas in the car, and packing up Sam’s stuff to make sure she didn’t die of not having cute enough clothes to wear while meeting the Crazies. (that would be my extended family…although I’ve realized that my immediate family contributes more than their fair share to the insanity of the much larger extended family)

After a relatively quick 3 ½ hour drive to Southern Indiana, we arrive at the cousin’s party. I am the youngest of my grandparent's 27 grandkids, and I found out when I got there that the oldest of the grandkids are now 50. FIFTY!!! YEARS OLD. Geez, where did the time go? There was grey hair aplenty around the pool, but that didn’t stop anyone from enjoying ourselves. Everyone flocked to see my adorable child, who promptly cried at the beer breath and loud voices. Poor thing had just woken up, and we thrust her into a social situation. Get used to it, kid. (We may have decided, in the future, that the first cousins party may just have to be extended to include second cousins who are of drinking age. My aunt crashes the party every time because she is closer in age to my oldest cousins than some of her siblings. Exceptions will have to be made.)

Discussion quickly turned to the amazing baseball team that disrupted the weekend. Most of my cousins that live in town send their kids to the small Catholic high school. Population around 20. (Or 80, whatever.) Earlier in the spring, there weren’t enough kids to have a baseball team, so my cousin Cory convinced his sister Emily to join. (This is the same girl who went to state in basketball a couple of months ago. Lost in overtime.) Then…they started winning. A couple more kids joined, and of the 11 kids on the team, 5 are my cousin’s kids. And those 5 have 4 different sets of grandparents. So of my mom’s 6 siblings, 4 had kids on the team. So the reunion was on Saturday, and the first regional game was on Saturday. Expectations weren’t real high, they weren’t supposed to win sectionals, going much further would be asking too much. And then they won the first game.

Everyone came back to the reunion for dinner and an auction and a “queen contest”. (everyone was disqualified) Once the auction was over, approximately 95% of the family left to go to the ballgame…the rest of us stuck around to listen to it on the radio. Brady (a freshman!!) was pitching a kickass game, Emily made an awesome catch to end an attempted rally, (not bad...for a girl) and Cory got an RBI. Jordan had a marathon at bat that wound up with 2 wild pitches to give Rivet an insurance run. I am sure there were more, but I wasn’t paying much attention. As soon as Brady struck out the LAST THREE BATTERS, we celebrated, trying to not wake Samantha, and my aunt got on the phone to someone at the game, and she said that the crowd was just going nuts. My cousin (who is a cop and was sitting right next to me) got a call from his sister (who is the principal) to see they could get a police and fire escort though town. REGIONAL CHAMPIONS!! That only took about 5 minutes to arrange. Had I not had a 5 month old to put to bed I’d totally have ridden in the cop car with my aunt and cousin…but alas, the joys of being a new mother.

Moral of the story?? Sometimes, small towns are just awesome.