On Saturday, Christmas Eve, we did some food preparation for Christmas dinner, and got a quick lunch at a little Thai-Chinese place in College Point. We then all changed and drove out to meet Aunt Mary, Maria, Dave, Rie, and Steve before their 5:00 service. After church we all had dinner at a local Italian restaurant with excellent food, huge, family-style platters, a very long wait, and a very loud, crowded crowd. Rie and Steve had to leave early to go back for their 9:00 service, and Maria and Dave left a few minutes behind them to drive back home to Jersey. We went back to the house with Aunt Mary, though, and sat with her, talking and visiting, until Rie and Steve got home around 11:00. Back in College Point, we exchanged gifts before bed.
Christmas morning, Sunday, we decided to skip the College Point church service since it would just be lessons and carols again, like last night, and we had a leisurely breakfast with smoked salmon and a calm, relaxing morning. Robert played Warcraft in the living room as he made his Christmas phone calls to various relatives, and Dad chopped and sliced according to my directions as Mom and I prepared the rest of the meal. Rie and Steve and Aunt Mary arrived right on schedule around 3:30, but Maria and Dave were stuck in traffic on the Cross Bronx, so we delayed the appetizer course until they arrived. Everyone pronounced dinner very good, though some of my experimental dishes (the carmelized cooked fennel, for instance, with figs) were a bit too out-there for my tradition-loving family.
We had a lot of good laughs, cracking up over the oddest things—once, later in the evening, after Maria and Dave had left and it was almost 9:00, Mom, Aunt Mary, Rie and I found ourselves hysterical over a friend’s unorthodox caller ID display. When everyone had left, and it was just us once more, we cleaned up and had a few cookies before bed, at the end of a very good Christmas.
Monday morning, bright and early, Mom and I went to Target for things like Christmas gift bags and plates, and then we spent half a day with Dad’s family, driving up to see Yia-yia in Yonkers and running into Aunt Pauline, Helene, Dom, and Thomas. After visiting with Yia-yia and seeing her safely down to lunch, we all went out to lunch ourselves at Cascarino’s.
In the afternoon, we swung by the Greek store and bakery before returning home to read and relax a little. Dinner was an excellent all-you-can-eat Korean barbeque at Picnic Garden on Northern Boulevard, and, having had our New York Korean food fix, the next morning Mom and Dad drove us back to Boston.
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Created: 01/19/06. Last Modified: 01/19/06.