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The Case of the Ruined Pumpkin Pie

Suspects:
Seth
Julie
Tim
Mark
Li sa

Have you ever noticed that near a holiday, teachers will sometimes ask you what that holiday means to you? Well, for me Thanksgiving means a lot of chaos. That's not usually what teachers expect to hear, but in my case, it's true. Before I explain, let me introduce myself. My name is Sam Childers and I'm 12 years old. I'm one of five children in my household and unfortunately for me, I'm right in the middle. I have two older brothers, Steve and Simon, ages 17 and 14; a younger sister named Suzanne who is 10 years old; and a younger brother named Seth who just had his seventh birthday. My parents did that annoying thing some parents do where they name their kids so that the first initials are the same. I guess they thought it would be cute since their names are Stephen and Sylvia and since they named us the way they did, we'd all have names that start with "S". They may think it's cute, but I don't think it's cute at all! It becomes a problem when you want to do something as simple as mark a plastic cup as yours so no one else drinks out of it. Most people just put their first initial. If I just write an "S" on a cup, it accomplishes nothing except for having an "S" on my cup, just like six other cups, one for each of my four siblings and one for each of my parents. We all learned at an early age not to use initials to mark things. Instead, we use symbols. For instance, my symbol is a triangle.

Anyway, that's just my immediate family. My dad has eight brothers and sisters and my mom has three sisters. My dad's brothers and sisters have a total of 24 kids and my mom's sisters have a total of 10 kids. This means I have 24 cousins on my dad's side of the family and 10 cousins on my mom's side of the family. By now you're probably asking what this has to do with holidays and chaos. Okay, here's the missing piece of the puzzle: every Thanksgiving, we have both my mom's family and my dad's family over for the holiday meal. That's right. When you include my grandparents, we have over 25 adults and 39 kids in our house for Thanksgiving every year.

How do we do it? Well, first of all I think my parents are crazy. I think that's a requirement for having over 60 people in your house at one time for Thanksgiving. Secondly, everyone brings a dish to add to the dinner and we turn our dining room table into a buffet table. You'd think seating would be tricky. You can't even have the traditional "kid table" because

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