Cousins are fun

When you're Italian, every one of your family members is your "cousin."

I absolutely adore my cousins!

There's my awesome first-cousin...

My fabulous Florida cousin...

My slightly spazzy but wildly successful cousin...

And many more cousins....

I was lucky enough to get to see everyone at this lovely lady's 90th birthday party in NY the other weekend:


WOOOOOOO PARTY!

It was fantastic. There was laughing, drinking and even some games... One game in particular was a sort of family trivia to see which of us knew the Birthday Girl the best. My table/team included my immediate family, plus my dad's brother and his fam.

And we totally cheated.

You see, Birthday Girl's husband told my dad and uncle all the trivia answers the night before the party. Where was she born? What's her favorite drink? What are her two favorite activities? We had it DOWN.

1. Bronx
2. Manhattan
3. Knitting and puzzles

Boom. We were fed plenty of other answers too. Cheaters never lose, right?

Wrong.

Apparently, Birthday Girl decided to change her freakin' answers!

1. Bronx (okay, can't lie about that)
2. Scotch (um, what?)
3. Gambling and puzzles

Sadface.

So, we lost. Like all good losers, we booed and hissed and challenged everything. 'Course, it's hard to be heard in a room full of drunk, competitive Italians, so it made little difference.

Losing aside, the rest of the weekend was a blast.

We danced.

We ate.

We were SERIOUS BAD-ASSES.

We listened to stories.

We Dad got drunk and tortured puppies.

We had homemade beer.

We were sad to leave.

Same time next year, folks? See you then!