Christmas Eve

I may just squeak this post in before midnight... and then it's off to bed to dream of dancing sugar plums.  Christmas Eve was really different this year, it was my first in Southern California and it was 72 degrees- most definitely shorts weather!  Sue, Rich, and I drove up to LA where they went to visit Sue's Aunt and Uncle and I drove Margaux down to our apartment to make Christmas Eve dinner.  And my goodness did Margaux deliver!  These are a few shots of our beautiful antipasto buffet on the bar...

I can take NO credit for the amazing dinner, Margaux took care of everything for me while I sat at the bar and we gabbed.  I did set our table... and no dinner would be complete without some serious table decorations.  I pulled out the Waterford crystal water glasses that Nonna Santi bought me every year for my birthday and used my good linen napkins even though that means lots of laundry for me tomorrow.  :-)

 

Here's our fantastic chef with my sweet man, enjoying martinis and Sam's early arrival home from the hospital.  Sam has been getting home anywhere between 7:30pm and 1:30am on this orthopedic surgery rotation and it's been hellacious for him.  Last night, on his parent's first day, he didn't get home until 10:30.  I felt so badly for him, when clearly all he wanted was to get to spend time with his parents and they with him.  Sometimes it is so frustrating for me not to be able to give them what they all want.  

It was a night of meshed traditions, we all shared the holiday memories from our childhoods and the wonderful things that we wanted to carry forward in future holidays.

Unbeknownst to us, Sue and Rich stopped with Pete to purchase Sam a menorah since we've been using the Target stickum menorah that my mom and I bought so far this Hanukkah.  It's so beautiful, they did a wonderful job picking it out for him.  And I think Sam likes it a lot, which is great because for the last 2 years he hasn't found anything he really liked.  Now we'll get to celebrate Hanukkah for real!

And as we lit the candles we realized we need some practice saying the prayer... and also remembering what the story and history is behind the festival of lights.  Thank goodness for Google!  

The menorah was such a great gift, one that Sam and I will probably use the rest of our lives...

Finally, after dinner,  we celebrated Pete's birthday (belatedly) with champagne and Grammy Hunter's Grasshopper Pie- one of my favorites.  Although my family wasn't with me physically, I had one thing on the table from each of my grandmas which made me acutely aware of all the family history that came before tonight, and all the traditions we will get to continue in the future.

It was a little sad for me to be texting my sister, who flew home for Christmas to see our parents.  My family went to dinner with two amazingly wonderful families from our hometown and it would have been great to have participated in that.  Carina texted me that she broke a glass at dinner, and I broke a bowl doing dishes so clearly we were channeling the same clumsiness tonight.  :-)  Best sister ever!  And after dinner I called Nonna and Papa Santi to check where Santa was.  It may seem silly, but Nonna used to tell us every Christmas Eve where Santa was after we finished dinner... I believe the tradition started the first year we went to Hawaii for Christmas.  As I was feeling nostalgic, I wanted to hear Nonna's voice, and low and behold, she knew exactly where Santa had last been seen- over the empire state building in NYC.  :-)

After I got off the phone and I snuggled into bed next to Sam, I waited patiently for him to fall asleep.  Then I got up and snuck into the living room where I played Santa for the first time- stuffing our stockings the way my wonderful mother still does.  And when I went to stuff my own stocking, I was shocked to find that my mom had already done it for me- Mom you are truly THE BEST.  And so I sit here, slightly moist-eyed, and realize that the true spirit of Christmas is not tied to who you are, or who you are with in the moment.  The true spirit of Christmas is something you carry inside of you.

xoxoxo

I love you Mom, Dad, Carina and Maxy- Merry Christmas!

One Week To Go

We are down to the last week before Christmas... 

• The Christmas cards have all been mailed (success!)
• All the presents are wrapped and under the tree.
• Obviously, as you've seen in the photos posted, our apartment looks very festive and Christmassy. The decorations have been nice because Sam has hardly been home this month, and somehow turning on the tree and the lights on our balcony makes the apartment feel less lonely.  
• My wonderful family (and Sam's) has been sending gifts, and I promise they are all under the tree waiting for December 25th.  Sam keeps saying that it looks a little selfish that we have already piled everything up, but again, it somehow makes me feel a little more loved.
• I'm almost finished with my Christmas shopping- only 2 people left on my list!  And I picked up the stocking stuffers last night on my way home from work, so that's done.  
• I bought bacon for Christmas morning breakfast to go with the incredibly Sticky Buns that Scott and Lisa sent us from Williams&Sonoma.  
• I have tried to throw myself into planning and preparing and cleaning to distract me from my loneliness. 

Full disclosure: this has been one of the toughest holiday seasons of my adult life.  (2009 was pretty horrible because Papa Hunter was losing his battle with metastatic prostate cancer, and it definitely takes the cake.) 

1. Sam's schedule has him gone so much that this has been the loneliest holiday season of my life.  In early med school he was around a lot, and by the end of medical school I had lots of friends I celebrated with in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  
2. 2011 will be the first time I don't spend Christmas with my family.  The only other time I haven't spend Christmas Day with my nuclear family was in 2006; my parents and Carina went to Hawaii, and I spent Christmas Day with the Hunter side of my family.  Even then, I was with blood relatives.  

It's so weird to think that none of my family will be celebrating Christmas with me this year, and even stranger to think that I won't be participating in my family's little kookie traditions.  Even typing this I am getting teary-eyed and choked up.  Is this what being an adult is?  Giving up the things you love?  I gotta tell ya, when I said I wanted to be a grown up, this is not what I had in mind.  

Sam asked me last night what I want for Christmas and I didn't have an answer for him.  The things I want for Christmas this year don't fit in boxes with wrapping paper because they're intangible.

Orthopedic Rotation

Tonight starts Sam's Orthopedic Surgery rotation at UCI... It's 9:23pm as I start typing and he is still not home yet.  Oh what a wonderful 12 days of Christmas this is going to be!  I jest, I jest.  In all seriousness, as much as we've been pleasantly surprised by the lack of crazy thus far in Sam's intern year rotations, I think all our worst thoughts are about to come true.  

So what will I do?  Well, for starters, I am going to try to get together a group of folks to watch the Newport Beach Boat Parade sometime this week.  I've made plans to go every year, and every year I cancel because it's raining.  This year, I'm going to try to get a group of friends to commit to dinner and make a reservation along the water where we can watch the parade from the warmth of indoor seating and delicious adult beverages.  What can I say?  Ya get older, ya get wiser.

On the flip-side, I am apparently still a novice at online shopping.  I wanted to buy Sam a fancy Christmas stocking so that mine didn't look so snobby- I should mention that mine is not diamond-crusted or anything, as you can see in the photo, it's an embroidered/cross-stitched picture of a bear on a rocking horse and a Christmas Tree with presents beneath it and it has my name sewn on it.  Nonna Santi got it for me when I was born and it's always had a very special place in my heart because stockings continue to be a BIG part of my family's Christmas tradition.  Anyway, I really wanted to include Sam and his family in the magic of stockings, so I went online and found a bunch of really cool ones.  Rather than going over the top, I figured I would see how this year goes before I bought everyone in his family a new stocking.  So I took some time and really considered what would be a nice, non-denomenational stocking scene that wasn't too girly or child-themed.  I picked out one that was really fancy and ornate, like an idiot.  When the stocking arrived, it turned out that I ordered a DO-IT-YOURSELF cross-stitch stocking craft kit.  Oh.My.God.  The reviews online, when I looked closer, said that it took one woman 4 months to finish.  FOUR MONTHS PEOPLE.

Of course Sam wants me to begin work right away, but I have never cross-stitched anything in my life.  I tried to watch a you tube video but that only further convinced me that I'm screwed.  Hopefully over the weekend I will have some time to sit down and focus my energy on beginning this project.  If I fail, my Mom said she will look around and find the perfect one for Sam next year... talk about having a great plan B.  I mean honestly, just looking at that jumbled spaghetti-looking mess of threads makes me anxious!

So anyway, as the 12 days of Christmas kick off tomorrow, I will be channeling all of my crafty talents and getting ready to undertake the project I am affectionately referring to as: "Make Sam's Stocking By December 2012."  With all the time I'm going to have alone in the evenings perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing to have ordered a do-it-yourself stocking kit.