my crazy family

"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."

~Erma Bombeck

My family is made up of many loud individuals who are all very much alike. We all look similar, with brown curly hair and light eyes, we have the same loud laugh, the same speaking voice, and we all have the amazing ability to talk so loud but be able to tune into another conversation going on at the same table. It's actually kind of creepy the way we are all so similar. Nearly every member of my family can play a musical instrument and sing. I sing and play the clarinet, my sister sings, my aunt plays the piano and sings, my grandfather plays the piano, accordion, and sings, two of my cousins play the flute, and my 8-year-old cousin has recently started taking violin, viola, and piano lessons. Seriously, you mine as well call us the Von Trapps and move us to Austria.

During holiday parties, we all will sing various songs and then pick out harmonies to try to make us sound like some barbershop quartet or something. It's fun for us, but I realized that for an outsider, we could all be very intimidating....or just plain crazy.

This thanksgiving, my mom had my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins over, which happens every year. We all ate dinner around three, and the volume of all of us combined caused my dog to leave his food and go upstairs to escape us all. In fact, I don't think he came back down until everyone left.

After dinner we all got out our instruments and began to fiddle around with some Christmas music that I had upstairs. We were having a ball and, when my friend came over for dessert, I was playing my clarinet while my grandpa was on our keyboard. We had my cousin plucking his violin strings and my sister and aunt singing the songs we were playing. The look on his face when he walked in was absolutely priceless. He actually looked scared, like he had just seen a horror movie or a ghost or something.

I guess my family is just one of a kind, but I'm sure all of your families have unique things about them, too. My friend wound up having a ton of fun this Thanksgiving as we all did. I guess sometimes a crazy family is the best kind of family.