Our First Family Gathering

It's official. Our house is a home. We've had my whole side of the family, plus Heather, Rob and Rowan, over all at the same time (that's 26 people, little people included). I feel like the house has been christened. We had Labor Day at our house to celebrate Ian, Sheila and Eric's birthdays. It was a great time and it gave me tremendous joy to have all my people over to our house at the same time.

I was a tad worried that the kids might be bored, since there isn't as much to do at our house as at Grandma and Grandpa's, but I believe we bought our way to success, with the pool, sidewalk chalk, balls and our real ringer - the swing.

Here are some of the darling children lined up (they organized this themselves) to wait for Paul to give them a turn.


Here is Kara, so excited to be next in line, and Sam, just getting off from his great adventure.

My mom said we needed an age limit, but I didn't want to keep any of the kiddos from using it, so I assured her it was fine. But then we saw this:

Maybe an age limit would be a good idea...but it seemed to hold Eric no problem. And it was his party, so how could I tell him no?

All around, it was a great day. However, I will probably go down in Sunukjian Family Lore for one of the most unromantic birthday gifts (up there with the steak knives my dad gave my mom and the toilet seat Peter gave Sheila). I gave Ian a trash bag holder - you know, the kind you can set up in your lawn and put the big black plastic trash bag over so that your bag stays open and upright while you load leaves, grass, etc. It's really a very handy tool, but yes, woefully unromantic. But he also got movies, a satchel, and very cool loafers from me, which are more in the acceptable realm of b-day gifts. So say what you will - it was a good gift.