December 24th has always been my favorite day of the year. No school, no work, no worries. The Christmas tree lights are on and there is usually some type of claymation Rudolph/Frosty/Santa Christmas special playing in the background on TV... And then there is the pure anticipation of the excitement that the rest of the day will bring: Getting changed into the “Christmas Eve outfit”, trekking to church against my will for the 4pm Mass in the overcrowded gym of the Catholic school, and then FINALLY making it to my grandparents’ house to await the shrimp cocktail (Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes) and gifts! The details of this description of course have been fluctuated and been modified over the years, but in short, that is Christmas Eve to me and I love it!
This year we’ll dress up as usual, go over to my gram’s house, and then THOROUGHLY pick our way through the “7 (i.e. 10-30) Fishes Dinner” which in our case includes shrimp cocktail, (I wasn’t lying), and various dips to start the night with. The party is then moved to the kitchen tables where we park it for the next 2-3 hours. This rigorous time-frame often presented a rather torturous feeling in me and my cousins from the ages of 3-10 because it took away from precious gift-opening time, but now I could probably sit and eat for 5 hours and be happy as a clam… *spoiler alert*. Anyway, back to the food… The rest of the lineup includes antipasto, smelts, baccala soup, pasta with white clam sauce, stuffed squid in cream sauce, crab casserole and scallops. The meal is topped off with a final dish of some sort of white fish baked in another scrumptious cream sauce. Can you tell why this is my favorite day of the year?? Thought so…
So that’s what’s going on for the rest of the day today, but I wanted to spend some time now updating everyone on what’s been going on with me in the past few days because APPARENTLY I’ve been slacking on filling you guys in on the fine details of the happenings of my life. I thought this was MY blog, guys! [winky face]. No really, I did want to do this anyway, I just honestly haven’t had a chance to get to blogging about it yet! So here ya go!!
First, enjoy a random assortment of pictures taken over the past week of some of the awesome flowers, gifts and arrangements I’ve received…
[Sorry for the horrible placement of these photos]
[Sorry for the horrible placement of these photos]
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Now let’s show some pics of the visitors that were lucky enough to have their photos taken while here J…
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Some other fun events captured on film: Event #1 – Christmas/Birthday Party at the Chelsea Sun Inn on Tuesday night hosted by an assortment of fine and beautiful people! Many good times were had seen here:
And check out the lovely Kat’s blog for more amazing photos of the event!!
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Even though it was not a "main event", Wednesday afternoon I enjoyed visits from 3 of my favorite people who had just returned home for the holidays the night before!!!! It was so fun and comforting to see them, and something I had definitively been looking forward to! No visual aides go along with these visits, they were just definitely worth mentioning!!
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Main Event #2 – Christmas Dinner at Stroudsmoor With the Ladies was on Wednesday Night! In substitution of exchanging Christmas gifts over the past few years, we have been doing a holiday dinner instead! Here’s a few gems from that night…
And finally last night was Main Event #3!!! Caroling Night!!! This is a family tradition my mom’s side of the family has been doing now for AT LEAST 15 years. Originally, the tradition started one Christmas Eve after dinner was eaten and gifts were opened. My grandfather decided that the aunts, uncles and cousins that were at his house that specific night were going to hop in the car and go SING at the elaborately-decorated house in Roseto a few blocks away for something fun to do. Apparently it was SO fun, (I describe it as if I was not there), that we knew we had to continue it in future years and naturally start to include the rest of my awesome/crazy extended family. The event has ever since been affectionately and infamously known as “Caroling Night” and happens EVERY year on December 23rd. We, (usually anywhere between 15-30 aunts, uncles and cousins), first meet at my gram’s house to pick up our song books, (yes, we have them and carry them mostly for show). We then divide into cars and “three-wise man caravan-style” travel to our list of houses. There are a core group of family and family-friends’ houses we stop at each year, who, (we like to think), eagerly await our visit. Stops include a few selected carols and then anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour-long visit of eating that guests' food and drinking their liquor before exiting to a rousing rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. It doesn’t get much more hardcore than that, people. We even have shirts that were made one year for the event, and are still worn by a few select members each year. Here’s a picture that was taken one year at one of our stops…
I’ll openly admit that even though I usually participate in the aforementioned event in terms of traveling to the houses and eating the food, (I really don’t normally do much singing anyways), I did not travel with the crew last night on all of their journey. I stayed at my grandmother’s house with her and my mom because frankly, I was tired and didn’t want to worry about slowing anybody down. My mom and I did however, meet up with everyone at the last stop and again back at my grandmother’s house for the end of the night for the cousins’ gift exchange which was epic as always.
So that’s that!! A little run-down of the week!! Did you have fun?? I’m going to shower now and get ready to eat that FOOD I talked about earlier! Maybe this will be the year where I’ll take pictures of all the dishes mentioned?? Hmmm we’ll see… Until next time!!
**MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!**
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