Tag » Christmas « @ CorianderseaCoriandersea

Christmas

Oh goodness, where to begin. I feel as though the week leading up to Christmas was all manner of hectic as I ran about getting last minute things and working. Today is the only day I get off work. Boo. Poor Zach didn’t get any time off at all. Major Boo.

The living room still has wrapping paper and boxes spread all over the floor. The kitchen looks….. yeah… can’t even describe that one it’s so bad. I wish I had vacation time – just to clean. Ridiculous, I know.

But the holiday was very nice and we both had a great time. Zach got off work early on Christmas Eve. We drove to his parent’s house for the traditional dinner out at a chinese restaurant. His father’s side of the family is Jewish, but his dad is non-practicing. They just like to go for tradition’s sake, which I love. Luckily the restaurant we always go to has a sushi bar, which is always delicious. We then opened presents with his family afterwards. Zach got some much wanted gun accessories for his collection and I received another cook book, which I’m very glad of since I was thinking the other day I’d like to have more to choose recipes from. A couple years ago they got me the Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook and this year I got the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook. I know Cook’s Illustrated magazine has great recipes in it so I was quite in awe of getting the cookbook with all 20 years’ worth of recipes. They also got me an amazon kindle gift card so I have quite a bit now I can use towards downloading good versions of books I want.

After teasing Zach several times about opening our presents on Christmas Eve, we went to bed. (He’s such a goody-good type. He prefers opening them on Christmas Day). I took some last photos of the tree and Bijioux, laying in her bed under the tree, before we nodded off for the night.

I won’t go into detail of all we gave each other, but we were both happily surprised by what we received. I will mention I was shocked when I got a wrapped piece of paper, which was a print out receipt for us to see My Neighbor Totoro at the IFC Center in NY on New Year’s Day! I LOVE Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films with a passion. I’ve collected all the Miyazaki and I’m now eyeing up the rest of the Studio Ghibli catalog. We’ve watched almost all of them, but don’t have them on DVD at all. Recently all new transfers have been made to ALL Studio Ghibli films and over a week half they are being shown in NY. So on NYD we’ll be taking a bus (already scheduled/paid for as well) to NY and watch one of our favorites on the big screen. SQUEEE! If any of my NY friends have recommendations for places to eat and maybe a couple things to do around the IFC, please let us know! We’re not overly familiar with NY so recs are highly appreciated!

After lounging about in our PJs and letting Bijoux sprawl out on all the wrapping paper on the floor (seriously, what’s with cats loving paper and crinkly things so much?) we got dressed and trekked it out to my parent’s house. Gifts were exchanged there between us, my parents and my sister & brother in law. Basically, it was another kitchen themed Christmas for us. But it’s all stuff we very much wanted/needed. We now have knives – that actually cut things! This is a new phenomenon for us.

My family confronted me on why I decided to start eating meat again, which seemed to them something truly spectacular. Unfortunately, my response was not anything that was going to wow them or anyone else. I honestly don’t have a reason for why I started eating meat again. Although my diet won’t entirely be meat meals now. I prefer to do a 50/50 with vegetarian meals I’ve been eating for the past 14 years. My dad laughed and said my response was like Forrest Gump when asked why he was running and he responded “I just felt like running.” Well, true enough, the same can be said for me. There’s no grandiose soul-reaching reason why I was vegetarian for so long, nor why I’m no longer one. I think part of me realized I was limiting myself and while I know many vegetarians would scoff at such a statement – meh, I’m ok with that.

The afternoon was spent eating my mom’s assortment of Christmas cookies, playing Wii games, playing with Mischa- my parent’s dog, and terrorizing Squirrel- my sister’s cat. A few games of Uno around the breakfast table after dinner concluded the night. At least our portion of it at my parent’s house. When we left, instead of taking the exit to our apartment back along the highway we zoomed on past and back out to the suburbs near Zach’s house to hang out with our friends.

Every Christmas day our friends Jess and Jule have friends over once family leaves their house. This can range from a small get together to a large noisy gathering, such as it was last night with roughly 25 people packed in Jess’s room before spreading out into other areas of the house to chat. We got to see friends who we’ve not seen since last Christmas and catch up with those we see on and off. It’s always a nice gathering and a tradition I rather like. There tends to be a lot of those with Zach and his family/friends.

Several hours later we were back in the car and finally heading home. Now to figure out where the heck to put everything in our already bursting-at-the-seams apartment and somehow do mild cleaning without it feel like cleaning on my only day off this holiday season.