Holidays!

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We went out to my mom's again on Christmas Eve.  We had our 7-fishes traditional Christmas Eve dinner, which included:  shrimp parmigiana, fried calamari, stuffed flounder, and pasta with a zuppa de pesce sauce.  Everyone was in bed before 11pm.  They figured that the earlier they get to sleep, the faster they'll wake up, LOL.   Mom and I arranged all the gifts, stuffed the stockings, and watched Meet Me in St. Louis with some tea and cheesecake.

Christmas morning was fun, as usual.  The kids opened their big gifts first.  Then onto everything else.  It was great.  Opening gifts lasted a lot longer and was so much less chaotic (but still really fun, I swear) when I did things my way, lol.  Breakfast was eggs and bacon, flavored coffee, rye toast, tea, etc.  My sisters came over and we exchanged more gifts and did more eating. 

Dinner was at around 5pm.  We had stuffed shells, chicken francese, loin of pork, etc.  Always too much food.  We brought home a bunch of it, though.  At 6pm we packed up and headed back into Queens to see dh's family at MIL's house.  More gifts, more food and we were home by 10pm.

I had most of the week off from work - mainly due to the ridiculous snowstorm we had here.  Normally it wouldn't have been a problem, but our spiteful sanitation workers decided to take out their frustrations on everyone in the city who was not involved in their budget cuts and hiring freezes.  So instead of taking less than a day to get the city up and running again after 20" of snow, it took 4-5 days.  Conveniently, they do this right after they all got their Christmas envelopes.  grrrr.

But overall, and through most of us battling stomach viruses, colds, and coughs, we had a wonderful holiday season.  We topped it off by celebrating New Years Eve with some homemade sangria, trays of snacks,  playing Taboo, and trying to stay awake til midnight. 

2011 is going to be a year of new beginnings.  I think I say that every year, but I'm going to really make it happen this time.  Anything I don't like, I'm changing. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERY ONE OF YOU.  MAKE 2011 THE BEST!