well, hey, when you've had three days as busy as mine have been, the update isn't going to be very short. those videos were five minutes to relax before i ran again. :D :P
so...we shall start with december 23. chronological order is always logical. ;) (hmm, maybe because it has the word "logical" within it. but i may be wrong.) we spent the day cleaning. and finishing baking. we still had two kinds of cookies to finish that morning, and after that we cleaned. "oh sure, no biggie. it's just not fun. you'll be done in a couple of hours." right? well, that's if your house is small. like, maybe 2,000 square feet, tops. mine isn't. we've got a 4,000 sq. ft. house. and a couple of little stinkers who like to make a mess. we finished the cookies about 10, and then spent the rest of the day cleaning. with an hour for lunch at 12, we finally finished at about 6. once i finished that, i was exhausted. (i am not out of shape...it takes lots of mental configurations to keep the house clean once you get it that way.) and of course, after we finished CLEANING, we then had to make our table seat 24 people. yes, you heard me right...24 people at one table. well, let's just say that it went the entire length of our dining room, plus about 6 feet into the library (office). and get tableclothes for the table. and get enough chairs out of the pit (also known as our basement). and i spent an hour and a half making placecards for the table. i was a bit frazzled. (monotonous work tends to do that to me, for some reason.)
on to december 24! i was a lazy bum, actually, and slept late. (hey, 7 is late for me!) but then when i got out of bed an hour later, i was running. 17 people were going to be here at 1, and we had to iron the tableclothes, iron the napkins, set the table with our china, do and redo the seating arrangement, keep the little munchkins under control, make the food (most of the food had to be made then served...it couldn't be prepared ahead of time)...oh, and try to clear a path through the inch-thick ice so that our family and friends wouldn't break their necks trying to reach our front door.
it was all worth it, a hundred times over. i love Christmas eve. we spend the week before rushing around to get ready. nerves are frayed. tempers run high. but we sit down to that dinner as a family, and suddenly, none of that matters. all of that tension, all of that discord is washed away in the presence of good food and good people to share it with. and the feeling stays. THIS brings Christmas truly close to a person. for me, it helps bring the spirit of Christmas truly near. that, and Christmas morning Mass. but hey...who wants to drool over the list of what we ate? h3h. here's the menu:
Ante past: shrimp cocktail (ante past (AHNteh PAHST) is italian for appetizers)
Pasta: red clam sauce, aglio and oglio (pronounced EYE-yuh-all, don't know why, just is)
Fish: fried haddock, fried scallops, fried smelts (ick...my dad is the only one who eats them), calamari in red sauce (yum!), buccala (cod salad)
Greens: escarole (a spinach-like green with olives)
Dessert: Christmas cookies and mini cheesecakes (plain, chocolate-drizzled, and chocolate dunked...i'm so glad my aunt went to culinary school! :D)
eight different kinds of fish total.
1. shrimp (shrimp cocktail)
2. clam (clam sauce)
3. (and you're not gonna like this one) anchovies (aglio and oglio, and i think maybe the escarole)
4. haddock (fried haddock)
5. scallops (fried scallops)
6. smelts (a little fish that you eat whole) (fried smelts)
7. squid (calamari in red sauce)
8. cod (buccala)
this dinner...*swoons in ectasy* i usually eat a little of everything, except the escarole. since i play hostess, i usually eat just one smelt, to encourage the others to try them...i didn't mess with it this year. i was sitting in an island of my dad's siblings, none of whom like the smelts either. :D and yes, i eat the aglio and oglio. it's good. rather oily, but good.
anyway, this meal feels so short, but takes so long...we didn't finish until 2:45. it was laid-back and relaxed. i wonder if that is why i eat so much at it...usually, i take all of ten minutes to eat my dinner. bolt it down, then run to whatever i must do next. or just bolt it down because it's habit. but when you're eating all this good, artery-clogging, saturated fat-rich food, you can't eat it quickly. you must savor it. (i think that the total calorie count is...without the calamari and cheesecake, in the vicinity of 6,000 calories. whoo yah, baby! :D) and you can't savor by bolting your food.
ah, yes. but anyway, after everyone left, we cleaned up and just laid back, we were so bloated. ;) no, i'm just kidding. we dismantled our table (seven people do not need a table long enough for 24), shook out all 9 tableclothes needed on said table, washed all the dishes, dried them, put them away, and started getting ready for Christmas day. this took us to 7. after which time, i took a break and made some nice, funny videos to relax. i was dying of laughter. :D they weren't, though...i must change my location before they can kill me. (or maybe i can bribe them with chocolate.) h3h. we watched the first hour and a half of It's A Wonderful Life, then, starting about 8. then we (we being me and my parents) shooed all those under the age of 16 upstairs (aka all four of my sisters), and came down to prepare for santa's arrival. you see, we are santa's elves. he has us help him eat all those cookies, because he can't eat all the cookies that are left for him in one night. i, however, was tired, and went upstairs before we got to the stockings. i went to bed, happy in the knowledge that my sisters weren't going to wake me up at an insane hour...
AND THEN THEY DID ANYWAY!!! they came in and woke me up at 6:30! i was still very tired, and hadn't slept well (actually, not from CEII [Christmas Eve Induced Insomnia], but just very restless sleep). i had told them that they would regret it if they woke me up...and i couldn't do anything to them, because my parents had told them to wake me up. :P *sigh* oh well.
anyway, after we got done with the squealing that usually results from my little sister opening her stocking, we ate breakfast, got dressed, and went to Christmas day Mass at 9:30. yes, it's an inconvenience. yes, we didn't get to finish opening gifts. yes, we could have gone the night before to "get it out of the way". but there is something special about going to Mass in the morning. it helps bring to mind the reason for the season. we went to Jesus' birthday Party, and were greatly rewarded, as we are every time we go to His Party. sure, it takes a two and a half hour chunk out of our morning...who cares? JESUS is the reason for the season! there is no Christmas if you take Christ out, but there isn't much of a Christmas if you take the Mass out, either.
so we got home, opened another present, then made homemade ravioli and italilennes. (not sure i spelled that right.) with our Christmas sauce, pork hocks (ankles), homemade meatballs, and Italian sausage, and broccoli salad...*dies* ah, yes, most of my favorite foods packed into two days. Christmas...i could give or take the presents. if you keep those, but take away the food and Mass...it's not Christmas anymore to me. but you could take the presents out of the day, and it's still Christmas. i guess that shows how your perspective begins to change as you get older.
after we finished cleaning up and opening the rest of our gifts, we finished It's a Wonderful Life, and watched Wall-E, which my aunt and uncle (WY and VA) had given us for Christmas. finished up the evening with some humor from Reepicheep (R received Prince Caspian) and some nice action scenes from The Dark Knight. awesome movie, by the way. love hans zimmer.
anyway, that brings me up-to-date for the most part. i might post later...not sure yet.
laterz, all!
-enna
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