Party at Pauline's.....

First official day... This morning I went shopping for rugs. This is really not a great thing. Rug's are hard. To get a really nice one we would have to pay a ton of money, and the cheap ones all look pretty...well...cheap. The expensive ones are way over our head. So, frustration. On top of that, we have differing opinions of what we want....etc.... just a recipee for disaster.

Right, on to the party.

I have twin aunts, Pauline and Paulet. Niether of them are in this picture. Every year we have a summer party and more time than not its at my aunt Pauline's. Here is a run down of who is in this picture.

Here is my cousin Jen. She is pretty great. I am always glad to see her. Life, and a couple bad decisions have handed her a pretty tough deal right now. Still, she is reallly nice and has great kids. They are party people. I remember a couple of years ago during Christmas, Casey and Emily (her son and daughter) came walking in to my grandmothers house chanting "Lets get this party started (while marching [they were 8 and 10 years old]). I have always loved Jen. She needs a great guy to marry her.

Here is Aunt Martha. She is not my Aunt. I think I call her that because my Cousin Shonda calls her that. She is her Aunt. She's nice enough. I thought about living in her house once with one of my friends. That lasted less than a week.... I don't remeber why that was.

This is Skip. He lives with Martha. He's nice enough. I think he owns a Auto Salvage place.

Here is my dad, and behind him, Nora and my Mom. Happily, My dad stopped with the comb over a while back.

Gramma. She is looing better and better. She stopped smoking less than a year ago and her eyes have cleared. It was really nice to see her looking so good.

Here is the first person at the party that I don't know. I think it my Uncle Alby's sister. She was pretty nice.

Here is Henry!! He just finished off the bowl of Cheese puffs. He had apretty good time. I think he would have liked to run around a bit more but the raind and the dogs (I'll get to those later) kinda prevented that.

Shonda hates having her picture taken and here she is posted on the internet..... She is also the most likely one to find this blog. This could lead to my ruin.... SHONDA IS THE BEST PERSON I HAVE EVER MET IN MY LIFE. (hope that saves me)

Jenny. She had a good time at the party. I think she wanted to go to this. Sometimes its nice to go somewhere mildly fun and just let it happen around you.

Here's Tammy. She brought her relish. It's funny, I always thought I was the canning type and Tammy started doing it before me. I thik I am a little jealous but mostly happy to see her having fun doing it. Her relish is really good!!!

Here are the dreaded unknown people. It is ok at summer parties, so this wasn't really that bad. It's at its worst when its at a holiday party or something like that. I don't know why I dread it that much. It always just feels awkward. Surrounded by my family, people that I have known my whole life, and then to see a completely unknown face feels like an invasion. Anybody else feel like this?? My Aunt MArie is sticking out in the back of them. Her husband, my uncle Bruce died a while back, that was one of the saddest things I have been through.... still sad about it... still don't really understand... Aunt Marie is great though.

So, that's about it. The party was typical and fun. Other people were there two, big characters like Uncle Tommy, Aunt Paulette, My cousins Brian and Kelly, My niece Katie, and a few other older people that I didn't know, hmm..... that's about it. The food was good: dips, hamburgers, hotdogs, some tropical drink that was blue, good good good.....