Ding FA DA Dong, Ding FA DA Dong

For me Christmas was a time of: laughter, idiocy, compulsive behaviors, and lots and lots of food. My memories of Christmas are filled with chainsaws, awful plane rides across the country, and lost luggage. Often times my day would end with me sleeping in someone else's bed or couch depending on the year (and always with new pajamas). The best of these memories for me includes: cooking marathons where endless pans of lasagna would be made, hours of fighting with the cookie gun for the perfect press cookie, exhaustion moving in with each roll of egg bow cookies, and lets not forget figuring out how to wrap those darn action figure packages all the while swearing about how someone should create a package easier to wrap... and I guess they did, in the form of x-box games. Each year, when Christmas Eve and Christmas day finally came, I would be flooded with the aroma of shrimp scampi, crab legs, artichoke dip, fresh ham, eggplant parmesan, lasagna,meatballs, butter cookies, fudge, peppermint cake, christmas cut-ups, and honey cookies. And all the while the sound of Bing Crosby's Christmas album playing in my head. It's with all this in mind that I put up my first blog. A Christmas blog dedicated to my own memory of Christmas. These first few photos are of my favorite time of year: COOKIE MAKING! After my Grandmother passed away and most of my family moved to Florida cookie making became a big tradition and a way to really keep the memory of her alive. Every year for Christmas my dad would fly our family of 4 from Utah to Florida and if we were lucky we would get there early enough to help make the cookies. This first one is blurry, but you can see my cousin Jill (from Jillsbelieveitornot) the baby must be Alexa (who is 7 now), my Aunt Ginny(her mother), My cousin Jeff (Jills brother) and his youngest son Justin. In this one we're making butter cookies (known to some as spritz cookies). The recipe belonged to my Grandma. These cookies require the cookie gun thingy and the hardest part is always to get the gun to work right followed by precise decorating as you can see. This next one has my Aunt Ginny again, with Jeffs son Jonathan (who gives the best hugs or used to but he's a teenager now, so who knows), and the poor boy with a double cowlick is Justin again. As you can see Jonny took his hat off in this one because rolling out the dough for these cookies is no joke! The dough for egg bows or honey cookies is like 10pounds of flower and 2 eggs (sorry, but it's my Grandmas secret recipe)After you figure out how to mix it all you have to roll the dough nearly paper thin, then cut the dough in strips, shape the strips, fry em, and coat em with honey and sprinkles. These cookies really require a group effort (thats why we try to con the little ones into rolling out the dough. HAHA) I love this photo. This is my mom and me holding my little cousins Alexa and Madison. Don't the babies look soo cute? This was the year that Jill spent like 2 hours curling all of my hair, but I don't think you can really tell in this pic. This is my dad in his usual stance. See my dad like most italians, thinks he knows EVERYTHING! and he thinks he should share his almighty opinion with everyone ... and really its useless to argue unless of course your me, and you also know everything. lol. in which his usual reply would be "yaw craaaaazy". Next to him sitting down is my Uncle Jeff (Jill and Justines Dad). The best thing about my Uncle Jeff is that he is one of few people who can offer my dad any real competition in an arguement. Above is me trying on a scarf my mother made me. The same scarf my father later told me (after too much red wine) looked like pubic hair. Lets just say that 3 years later I still have not found the confidence to wear it out of the house. See, I even have proof about the wine. Does anyone have a camera I can borrow???? In this one from near to far its Uncle Jeff, his son Jeff, My dad, and Justines hubby Jimmy. Awww what a cute snuffy dog. As many of you who follow my cousins blog (Jillsbelieveitornot) may know, Disney was a big part of tradition in my family and the holiday season for me usually ended with a silly day after Christmas family tradition we called "theme park day". Every year we picked a different theme park to go to. Disney, Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, Sea World, we did them all. Looking back at some of the photos and listening to my husband recall his one time attending this event I wonder was it really a good idea or just plain catastrophe? While we all had good intentions with theme park day its really just an awful idea for a tradition. First off: any florida resident can tell you that the day after Christmas is like THE worst day to go to a theme park because there are huge crowds. Second: Who the HELL has a dime to spend the day after Christmas? Third: Why the HELL weren't we at the mall taking advantage of those after holiday deals if we had so many dimes to spare?? Fourth: how the HELL can you make it through a theme park with 20 italians? I mean, who is going to be the leader? All 20 italians think that their plan is the best plan. and All 20 italians will argue about that until they die because they all know everything, right? Fifth: Since no 20 italians can agree when its a good time to get a hot dog or a soda it takes 2 hours just to get to the line for the ride, which will also have a 3 hour wait. so if you add that up it takes about 5 hours per ride so you might get to go on 2 rides, maybe 3 if one group of italians accidentally gets lost while going to the bathroom and you run to the next ride instead of waiting for them. lol. All in all I think we had good intentions, but I'll let you be the judge. I only have 3 pictures of theme park day, but I think you'll get the idea pretty quick. This is probably one of our million bathroom, drink, or smoke breaks that the day seemed to revolve around. Notice there is no smiling face to be found? Yet another break which I am apparantly thrilled about. I think this is the only group photo ever taken after theme park day and its hard to imagine after 12hours of treking through a theme park together that everyone appears to be smiling. Sorry some of the photos are weird, but most of my momento type stuff is still back at my parents house in utah, which is a hell of a long walk from ohio. lol. so these will have to do. The last picture is of My Christmas tree this year. I tried to do red and gold theme. I even bought solid red lights and white lights. The only problem is now you can't see what color any of the ornaments are cuz your blinded by red lights. lol. oh well. Live and Learn, right?