Posted by Lia on Dec 27, 2008 in
Family Oh Christmas, you pain in my arse. I know most people celebrate this day as just another time to get presents. Well if that is what you want, just to sit around and get presents, then my kind of Christmas is NOT for you! Let me explain this holiday. The night before Christmas, which yes is Christmas Eve my grandmother cooks a 12 piece meal. The 12 symbolizes not only the 12 aposoltes, but the 12 days of Christmas. We have EVERYTHING you could ever think of and more. I swear in 2 days I gain 10 pounds. Grandma cooks turkey, ham, fish, pasta, chicken, potatoes, veggies, soup, then we have 2 sometimes 3 kinds of dessert. Now people, we are lucky is only 20 show up, but normally it’s upwards of 30, so yes you have to wait in line for 1st, 2nds, and oh yes, 3rds. Then we all go back to our own houses where we are able to open ornaments from each other, and out of state gifts. Growing up I loved this part because that was like 5 gifts to open, now it’s just a hard in the mail with a gift card. Oh how I miss the young days. Now let’s talk about Christmas morning. Well I get up around 8am, we have breakfast at the house, and then we do Christmas presents from Santa (yes he still brings me stuff) and from people who live in the house/ siblings. We do that til about 11ish, then we head over to grandma’s house. We do the first hour of presents from noon til 1pm, and then we eat at 1pm (well first course that is) and then we do presents from 2pm til about 4pm. Then we stop and eat again. Then we do presents from 5pm til 7pm. Then we eat dessert. Then again 8pm we start playing with our gifts. We normally have about 15-20 people who are exchanging gifts, so you could imagine how long it takes us.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love my family, and I love how we celebrate holidays, but it’s a very long, very loud day. Do you know how hard it is to make sure everyone gets a present before a person who just had one gets another one? More difficult than you think when you have 3 people trying to do presents. Normally I am in lead, I put piles together of these are all mine, these are all hubbys, my parents, and then my two cousin’s take turns handing them to the person and announcing to who they are for and to who them are from. It’s a lot of work, but it’s well worth it work. Well anyways, that’s my Italian Christmas story. Ciao!
Posted by Lia on Nov 28, 2008 in
Family Since I didn’t post yesterday for Thanksgiving, here is a little funny for it.
Just think – If the Indians have given the Pilgrims a donkey instead of a turkey, we would all be having a little piece of ass for Thanksgiving. 
I had an amazing Thanksgiving with my family and family friends. We had pasta, turkey, yams, potatoes, salad, stuffed mushroom caps, bread, American and Italian stuffing, and who else knows. After that we had a good 2 hour break where to watched football, looked through the ads, and then got ready for dessert. Dessert … my favorite meal!!!! Oh and we had plenty. We had pumpkin pie, pecan cheesecake, turtle pie, cookie dough ice cream pie, cookies, Italian cookies, normal ice cream. I think I gained 10 pounds just from looking at it.
So what is Black Friday … Don’t we all wonder? I guess it’s just this thing stores made up to make money. You know we all eat Turkey, so we go to bed early, so they figure “oh let’s open at 4am and only have 10 TVS, and have 200 people in the store, maybe they will buy something else”. haha it’s like Valentine’s day, all about $$$.
Anyways this is what black friday really is … Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees have the day off, which increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open very early (typically 5 am or even earlier) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term “Black Friday” has been traced back only to the 1960s.
Personally, I like just going out for the experience of the day. I normally don’t buy too much, I like just to get up early and experience the drama. It’s quite a rush! Well today I just went to get a few things. An awesome 4-in-1 stick vac, a 6.5 pre-lit x-mas tree, and a few towels, and I ended up with 15 movies (they were all 2 bucks each). haha, I think hubby and I will be having A LOT of cuddle nights now.
Well I hope everyone had a safe and fun day, but I need to get back to cleaning. We have some people coming over tomorrow for the holiday parade tomorrow. See you later!
Posted by Lia on Nov 2, 2008 in
Family Sunday dinner … nope sorry this does not mean eating pizza and drinking beers to watch the game (well unless your counting that as a snack.) Sunday sinner in my household means being at Grandma’s house at 2pm for a 3pm dinner and family time. Yes we do eat a real dinner (pasta, meat, salad, fruit, cake) at 3pm. A normal breakfast for me is around 10am and then I eat a snack around 7pm. Sunder dinner is an Italian tradition about being together with family. Well then family time it is. It is normally my grandparents, their 4 children, and their children’s spouses, and then the grandchildren. That right there is a simple 16 people, and that isn’t counting if someone brings a friend, or just feel like inviting some old family friends over for dinner. So anytime you want to be surrounded by a loud loving Italian family with homemade food, don’t hesitate to give me a call. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but sometimes it can be too too much.
Posted by Lia on Oct 30, 2008 in
Family This past weekend I drove about 30 minutes north of where we live to pick up my brother who was at a wedding. My mom had always instilled in us not to drive home drunk and that we could always call her no matter what time or day and she wouldn’t judge. Trust me, my brother and I have both taken advantage of this, which isn’t a bad thing. We normally call each other, but there has been a few times where midnight the house phone is ringing and we are nicely asking to be drove home. I love my brother. He is awesome and one of the greatest guys I know. We are two years apart and it wasn’t til high school when we got really close. I honestly don’t mind the 2am phone calls to pick him up. I would rather be woken up at 2am by him calling asking me to drive his drunk ass home, then be woken up at 2am with a cop on the other end saying “We believe your brother has been in an accident, and it doesn’t look good”. This is one thing I for sure want to instill in my own children, and in my little cousins (which trust me, I have started). They whole reason I gave you this pre-story is because I came across and article today that just made me cry. It is an amazing story and I want to share it with all of you.
A 19 year old girl and her 17 year old brother died because of a drunk driving hitting them. ( I know that doesn’t sound like much, but read the story).
… The 17 year old brother was at a party, and he had a little too much to drink. He knew better not to drive home, so he did the right thing. He called his 19 year old sister and asked her to come pick him up at the party because he knew he was unable to drive home. The 19 year old sister left her house in the middle of the night to go pick up her little brother so proud of him for calling him and not attempting to drive home. She gets him from the party, gives him a big hug and thanks him for being responsible. About half way home they are struck by a drunk driver, and neither of them make it, but you know the drunk driver does. The parents get a knock on their front door, and with both of them barely having their eyes open, they answer the door. The see a police officer standing in front of them explaining to them that their children were involved in an accident and unfortunately they didn’t have it. The mother starts screaming NO NO NO, my daughter she is upsets and our son is staying over his best friends house, NO NO NO. The mother runs upstairs to find her daughter missing, the dad runs outside to see her car is missing. They both start to cry instantly. The next morning the parents found out that it was their children in the car that had been hit. She had spoke to some kids who were at the party and they simply told her that her son didn’t want to stay, he wanted to go home so he called his sister. They found out that on their way home, the children were hit by a drunk driver who ran a red light and flipped their car. The mother was so upset to learn that the drunk driver walked away from the accident with only some minor injuries. The mother was so proud of both her children, one for knowing not to drive and be the cause of an accident, and the other for being there for her little brother…
So the story is … two innocent kids die because of a drunk driver. I am not saying either one of the kids were right, but they were being smart about their decisions. The son didn’t want to drive drunk, and the sister didn’t want her brother driving drunk. Unfortunately in the end, they both paid the price for someone else’s mistake.
Posted by Lia on Oct 19, 2008 in
Family I was awake at 10 minutes til 7am. Why you ask. Oh I will tell you. My wonderful Hubby was having a minor problem and thought he needed to go to the ER. He wakes me up, we talk about and it find out he just has a sereve migraine. Oh well, non the less I have been awake and happy most the day.
I just got home from the beach. We got all the family together there and just ate some good old american food. Nothing really special today. No cool entry as I am way tired and just want to sleep. I will make sure I have an awesome entry for tomorrow!
Posted by Lia on Oct 18, 2008 in
Family In-Laws, you know, normally the pain in your arse? Well my in-laws are NOTHING like that. I honestly have the best in-laws that I could ask for. Not only do they treat me like family, but their actually family (no matter if it’s a sister, cousin or aunt) treats me like part of their amazing family.
Hubby parents (all of them) are amazing people. They would do anything to help anyone they could. Hubbys mom and step-dad live in a cute ltitle ranch house next to an ex-steeler. They are two of the funniest people I have met. Step-dad teases me weekly (when I get a chance to chat with him on the phone) about his fake ivy. They have gorgeous ivy that grows acorss the front yard. Now I thought it was fake because it doesn’t look real, so I asked him about it one day, and he told me I was blonde (which I am). For my wedding person, he went to wal-mart and got some fake ivy and put it in my gift and told me to start growing my own and not let it die. I smiled and laughed about it.
Now my hubby’s dad and step-mom are opposite his mom and step-dad. They live in a houses that they built and have mulberry trees (yummy). They have raised their kids to understand the meaning on a dollar, and on weekends they run their own lilttle one show movie theater. It’s not always the movie that came out that week, but it is always family friendly movies that I loved to go watch.
My Mother-in-Law (MiL) and my Step-Mom-in-Law (SMiL) both have myspace. Now it’s not very often that they leave me messages, but when they do, it’s the sweetest things ever. Like the other day MiL left me a little comment just saying “I love my best daughter-in-law”. Now she has another one, but no one likes her, and we don’t speak of her very much. So it’s nice to know she likes me more (which I never doubted). All in all, I truly love ALL of my family, and they mean so much to me.