A Family Affair

I come from a huge family. Granted, I am an only child, but only in the sense that you consider my father an adult. Carlos, as my roommates now refer to him, typically would act more like a child sometimes than I did; letting me stay up late when my mom would work nights so that I could watch Murder She Wrote and McGyver and winning every pick-up baseball game we had in the front yard. Losing was for sissies and I was officially a sissy basically in every game we played! This did make me quite competitive and taught me to try harder, but possibly the name calling was unnecessary...possibly. 

My dad is the oldest of eight with an even larger extended family made up of cousins, second-cousins, and basically anyone else my grandma wants to call family or a "close" family friend. I put "close" in quotations for as anyone who has ever met her will attest, she has met thousands of people in her lifetime (look at the photos in her house) and basically every one of these people become a close family friend! I am the oldest cousin by a few years on my dad's side and my newest little cousin will be born this summer. This will most likely be the last..at least we think!! Thus far, we have sixteen little Ritter offspring to make the world a louder and more anxiety-prone place: Nick, Caroline, Brianna, Brendan, Matthew, Nick #2, Christopher, Alex, Christina, Frannie, Joey, Rachel, Jack, Meghan and Nolan (my godson).  

On my mom's, side, she is the third oldest of seven. I have fourteen cousins on my her side: Matthew, David, Kevin, Whitney, Vanessa, Cole, Andrew,  Chris, Natalie, Zack, Julia, Makenna, Cristian & Brendan. As you can tell there are many duplicate names betweent he two sides. We are growing the family even more as some of my cousins are married and will probably start having kids of their own soon. 

My huge family is wonderful and I would not trade it for the world. All of the aunts, uncles, cousins and relatives are so supportive of one another and even when activities and days do not go as planned, or if there is unnecessary drama in the world regarding forgotten rolls and mysterious gifts, I must sit back and remember that this is what makes my family special.