Happy Holidays everyone! So Christmas Eve is when the Lee and Rocero side both gather at my parents’ house for our annual Christmas party. However, we must have dropped the ball this year because when the first families started arriving, nothing, and I mean nothing, was ready. Not the food, not the decorations, not the presents, nothing. This could be for a number of reasons:
1.) We decided to forego the Noble Fir tree we stress out about getting every year for the more economical Plastic Fir, so that we could concentrate on our new tradition of “themed Christmas tree.” Last year it was an “Under the Sea Christmas,” and this year we took on an “Outer Space” theme. Basically, my brother and I have been paper mache-ing spheres (for the planets) and cutting/folding/coloring little paper doll aliens for the past two weeks. It actually ended up looking pretty cool, but was completely incomplete until about halfway through the party, and with the enlisted help of my cousins, we finally finished the tree topper.
2.) We never really wrap our Christmas presents until last minute. I don’t know why, but it always seems like a non-issue until we actually see people arriving. Then one of us tries (often unsuccessfully) to hide away in a room during the party to quickly throw some wrapping paper on the presents we bought. This year, my family had the gifts for the kids down and wrapped, but we didn’t have presents for each other, let alone having them wrapped. So periodically, we were sneaking out to the mall to buy presents for each other, despite the fact that we really needed to be at home concentrating on getting the house party-ready.
3.) My dad and uncle took forever to get back from golf, when we needed them to buy key ingredients on their way home. Only when they finally did get back, they had forgotten to go grocery shopping at all. So we had to send them out again, even though they were all grumpy and tired from playing golf on empty stomachs all day. Not like there was any food to settle their hunger.
4.) My mom completely forgot about the chicken marinating in the fridge. So by the time she remembered, it was pretty late already so she had to have everyone help skewer and grill the chicken, plus make the seaweed salad before dinner could be served. It was truly a team effort. Or, at least my aunts helped. The males were all gathered in front of the television watching Kung-Fu movies -___-
5.) Then she forgot to cook rice, so one of my aunts volunteered to do it. Then that aunt forgot to plug the rice cooker in. Set-back #6.
The one thing that was somewhat ready, was the cookie platter I was baking for the kids, since they never touch the red bean soup my mom usually makes for dessert. I made peppermint sugar, chocolate gingerbread, and cranberry-pecan oatmeal cookies. The idea was to make one last effort at being a “cool cousin” by bribing the babies with sweets. It didn’t work. I still get no hugs from the ungrateful little monsters -___-They were a hit though, so much that everyone was eating cookies for about an hour, spoiling their appetites for my mom’s gigantic spread of curry dishes. Ah well, more leftovers for me =]
