Christmas in Ohio!

Here is a brief (not) summary of our Christmas..

We went to Christmas Eve mass. Not midnight...7pm. Well..actually we went at 6:15, because we had been told that there would be carol singing until mass started. We arrived at about 6:20..about 10 minutes after my aunt's family. We filed into the pew behind her. I heard music, but I the only person that was singing was the person that I presumed to be the 50-60yr old vocalist for that church..or something like that. She was standing up at the front of the church singing her heart out with a hymnal in her hands. I leaned forward and whispered into my aunt's ear, "So, I thought this was carol singing..not carol listening." She laughed and solemnly whispered back, "No, That's Carol" She said, pointing to the lady who was still lustily singing away. I just about lost it then, but I regained my composure, and sat back, opened my hymnal and started singing. Believe me, that lady needed all the help she could get.

Anyway, the rest of the mass was pretty normal, except for the priest pointing out my 20-30 extended family members that were all sitting together, by saying, "Do you ever wonder what the heavenly hosts sound like? Well, we have them right here. All of those beautiful children singing right over there." He pointed in my pew's general direction, and I wished I could disappear as the people that hadn't already been staring at us turned and looked my way. (This wasn't many, because apparently that church doesn't get visitors very often, and pretty much everyone was already staring at us.) Oh, but besides all that..mass was pretty normal..well..besides the fact that my 3yr old cousin cried for about 20 min, and my 18mos old cousin shrieked "Whoa!" at the top of her lungs when she slipped off the kneeler.

You probably think I'm done, but no. I want to make you waste as much time reading this as possible. After mass we ran to the car. I REALLY envy boys in the winter..on Sundays..tights are not very warm! So..we drove off down the road towards our cabin, singing Christmas songs.. And we decided that we were going to get a Christmas Tree. To understand where we were going to get it from..we have to back up to the Sunday before Christmas.

We were driving back from church (this is Sunday), and we saw what looked like a Christmas tree farm. But there wasn't anyone selling them..they were all still in the ground. Except for a pile of about 30 trees cut down and wrapped up in netting, in a field on the side of the road.

Back to Christmas Eve. Yes, we stole a Christmas tree.
There we were, coming home from Mass, singing carols, thinking of "Carol" and we decided to STEAL a Christmas tree! We pulled off the country road into the field and turned off our lights. Daddy jumped out of the car and grabbed the enormous flashlight that we just happened to have with us. As he picked out a tree, I began to wonder..why were these trees out here? Were they infested with some type of pest?! When voiced aloud, my thoughts were shot down by some sarcastic remark, about my fear of bugs, from my mother. Mariana turned on her little light. "TURN IT OFF!!" My father said. A car drove by. "I don't think they saw us" I said. "Why don't we want them to see us?" Nastia (10) said. I don't think we bothered to answer that question. My dad finally got the tree tied on the roof next to the roof rack. We slowly backed out and continued on our way. "I think we should make something clear." My dad said, "We're not STEALING this tree. We're appropriating it." Right.

We got home, decorated the tree, I helped my parents get stuff ready for the next day, my aunt and uncle helped us too, I went to bed, I was rudely awakened at about 8:30, we opened presents, I got an ihome (ipod speaker thingy), we had our family over for brunch, and that pretty much sums up my Christmas Eve and day.

Oh, and we had Italian Wedding Soup on Christmas Eve! YUM!!