Christmas

Christmas is my favorite holiday of the entire year. My family normally goes down to North Carolina for Christmas break. The car ride always seems to take forever. It takes 12 hours with light traffic. My mom and dad take turns driving while me and my brother are stuck in the back seat with the dog in the very back. If is cramped and uncomfortable, especially when my 6ft tall brother wants to lay down and take a nap. The first few hours of the trip arn't that bad because we leave at five in the morning so I just sleep. But right around the 6 hour mark I run out of things to do and get really bored. I even started looking at people's license plates once to see if I could find all fifty states, I found all of them except Alsaka. Once the ride down is over we go to my aunt's house where the majority of my dad's intermediate family is already staying. We normally have a small dinner and then my brother, my cousin, and me share the room up on the 3rd floor. The days before Christmas are spent going to the mall down there, hanging out with relatives, and preping for the big Christmas Eve feast. It is an Italian tradition to have 7 different courses of fish the night before Christmas. So the entire day is spent in the kitchen getting everything ready for that night. When we all finally sit down for dinner there is tons of dishes of food litering the table. There is calamari with just the right amount of breading, warm homemade crab cakes that are just barely spicy, and clam and mussels ready to soak in as much butter as I want. Then we have flounder with a zesty lemon maranade, fat stuffed squid (which I still don't have the guts to try), jumbo shrimp with pasta, and as for the rest I normally to stuffed to even eat. That night I go to sleep pretty fast because I'm so full. In the morning I wake up and wait in the kitchen with the other early risers for everyone else to wake up. Then we all meet in the living room to see what is in our bulging stockings. I love to sit on the comfy couch by the warm brick fireplace. Everyone takes turns opening the colorful presents under the christmas tree. We take plenty of pictures to remember the day and then we let the dogs come in to open their presents and play in the huge piles of wrapping paper. It is always sad when we have to leave for the long ride home and I'm already looking forward to it the next year.