Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Christmas 2006



Yes, yes, ok ok! Enough! I know that I’ve been negligent of my poor blog. I know.

Just in case some of you weren’t aware, I went to the US for two weeks. It was the appendicitis-postponed trip. As anyone who has been reading here for a while knows, when I go to the US my abilities to blog completely seize up. They stop. I am completely unable to write even one post. This is not a technology problem. Think about it a second, if you only had say 4 weeks a year to spend with loved ones that you see for, well only for four weeks a year, would you be on the computer? Ok then, get off my back.

Oh yeah, well, I’ve been back for a while. I could have been writing. It’s Christmas, get off my back again.

My Christmas excuse here is NOT that I’ve been 1) knitting massive amounts of Christmas gifts to give to people – I opted out of that this year, I bought shit. 2) baking massive amounts of cookies to give to generous and deserving friends and neighbors – I opted out of that this year. Italians don’t like my cookies. Fuck ‘em. 3) decking the halls with boughs of holly – I opted out of that this year. One string of lights in the bedroom, and those went up mostly so I can read at night without the floor lamp that bugs my husband.

I don’t mean to sound so bah-humbug. I love Christmas. And I loved it this year as much as any. My no-writing-Christmas excuse is that, it seems that, the longer David and I spend in this area and the more people we get to know, the more friends that we make…the more there are people feeling the need to adopt us for holidays. This is to say, we got a lot of “are you going to be alone for Christmas?! You can’t be alone!” invitations.

As it turned out, we got invitations for all meals for all days and if we weren’t previously booked, it seemed to the asking friend that we were going to be stuck in Maberga for the whole Christmas season without other human contact.

As a result, we had a beautifully overbooked Christmas, leaving no time for me to document it here in my blog. Sorry.

I want to say that I feel completely blessed by this holiday season and it couldn’t have been more complete for me. I was offered the luxury of a great visit with family and friends in my home in the Midwest of the US and the wonderful experience of a extended family and friends in my adopted home in Liguria.

There are too many memories to capture here, so I won’t even try. I’ll just share a couple of particularly nice images.


Mom's birthday with some fun aunts and uncles and a cousin (they would be in-laws and a niece if you are looking from mom's perspective).













Grandma - still making me dinner when I come to visit. I'm not that special, she does this also for my dad every time he mows her lawn. She's pretty special though, doing it at 96 years old, living alone in the house she was married in. Whoa.













Some Serpe, a little cleaned up. It doesn't happen often but this was a fund-raising dinner. Anyone who wants to contribute to an organization that assists disabled adults in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, please go here. (NO! you won't find my family website!)







Fried dough - a Christmas eve tradion for southern Italians.


Christmas eve...Sardegna/Sicily style. Once I've recovered, I'll tell you what these people do with cherries and blueberries!


Dinner, Swiss/Italian style with some americans, a couple danes, half a chilean, a greek, a swiss, and, well, some italians .

















Happy New Year to everyone.

No comments:

Post a Comment