Buon Natale and Happy New Year!

Well, this is my long overdue Christmas post. I'm home now and just had a great New Year's nap. Even though Mike was also taking a nap on the couch, which means that I squashed myself into the love seat. Still a good nap though.

Last night was a very mellow New Year's. Mike and I went to Sarah and Fraser's house to play some games and eat food. We did do a dutch tradition that I recently heard about called Olie Bolen, (sp?) which involves deap frying small balls of dough and then dusting them with icing sugar on a platter and sharing them with friends before midnight. Oh, and eating A LOT of olie bolen. Today my pants smelled of olie bolen (similar to the smell you get when you make french fries). It was a lot of fun though and I enjoyed being the traitor (once again) when we played Shadows over Camelot.

Christmas was an exciting adventure as well. We went to Port Alberni on the 23rd and Mike went to play hockey while I visited with my mom and sisters. Then, we went to Ashley's house for an early birthday party since her birthday is on Christmas day.

On Christmas eve we had famlily portraits taken with Mike's family, then went to see The Nativity Story. It was good but Mike kept falling asleep near the end and I had to elbow him a few times. Afterwards we went to Mike's Dad's place to have our Christmas with them. We opened present and had a big fondue for dinner. It was very yummy.

We then spent the night at my mom's house and had Christmas morning at her house. My little sister woke us up at 7:19 am and we got up to open our stockings and presents and then my mom made us waffles with strawberries (our Christmas morning tradition). This year she made so many that I froze the extras and ate them throughout the week. Very yummy.

At lunch time we went to Mom #2's house to open gifts and see Mike's sister and our nieces, then to the nursing home to visit Mike's grandma, then my nonna and nonno. Christmas is always a busy day for us since we have 7 parents between the two of us!

For dinner we went to Mike's sister's house and ate a delicious turkey dinner and cranberry stuffing. We played a game and then since we were so tired we decided not to spend the night (the nieces are tiring after a while and require a lot of energy). So, we made it back to my mom's in time to catch the end of her Christmas dinner and visit with the Italian side of my family. For those of you who don't know, this is the side which includes Crazy Uncle Bruno. They are also the side that always gives cash and since me and my sister's are the only "kids" in the family, we tend to get spoiled. Hence the fact that I've been shopping every day for the last three days....
It was nice to see them quickly before they went home though, since nearly every Christmas I wonder if it will be my nonno's last. He will be 95 this year, so he's getting very old and is just starting to lose a bit of his memory. As my nonna puts it, "nonno repeats a lot". (In Italian accent). I always enjoy visiting my nonna though, it usually gives me some new little tidbits about her very exciting life before she came to Canada and more ideas for my novel about her life and the many poems I have already written. This time, she told me about how when she and her family fled Ethiopia to go back to Italy, she had to leave everything behind in their house. She remembers, 67 years later, every memento from her wedding that she lost. Her Dad hid them in the attic in a box--her high school diploma included. She still has a beatutiful black and white photo of the two of them on their wedding day though, with lips and cheeks tinted pink.

So, Christmas was lovely as usual. Enjoyed the build up, the lights, seeing family, and thinking about the true story of Christmas.

Then, on Boxing day the craziness began. We were awoken with 2 phone calls. The first informing us that Mike's mom, who hadn't been feeling well since Christmas eve, was in the hospital and possibly having her appendix removed. The second, informing me and my sisters that my Dad (who worked Christmas night in Vancouver General hospital) was now a patient in the hospital and they believed he had the Norwalk virus. So, he couldn't come to Port as planned for the boxing day dinner we were having with him. It sucked because we were really looking forward to it. But, we tried not to let the bad news ruin the relaxing boxing day we had planned. For the past few years we've always had to work boxing day, which kind of ruins Christmas since you have to get up at 5 am to make it back to Victoria in time. So, we slept in anyways and stayed in our pyjamas and played board games, waiting to hear back from either of our hospitalized parents.

In the end, my Dad ended up coming to Port for our Christmas with him on the 28th instead, which worked out well. We had an awesome ham dinner (thank goodness) and opened presents and played games. He gave me a lovely hard cover boxed set of the Lord of the Rings, with illustrations.

Mike's mom ended up having major surjery to remove her appendix and part of her bowel where they found a tumor and just went home from the hospital last night. Thank goodness they are both okay though.

Well, that was our Christmas. It was the longest Port Alberni visit we've had in the past few years so it was very nice and I'm looking forward now to a week off before it's time to start teaching!

Hope all your Christmases were a little less exciting and that your New Year's is very exciting!

p.s. Happy Birthday to Emily Noelle Linde, our youth pastor's new little baby, who was born on Christmas Day! What a nice Christmas present. :)