Thursday, January 5, 2012

Day 3

    This morning we woke up at 4 am and set out in a rental car for Rochester New York. There was virtually no one on the road the whole time since we had beaten all the traffic. After about 3 hours of driving we stopped at a Perkins to have some breakfast. After that short stop we continued on the road until we finally arrived at our grandparents house around 12pm. They were excited to see us and greeted us with lots of hugs and kisses. Slowly, one by one, relatives started to trickle in for our Christmas eve dinner.
    My grandparents have an amazing house in the woods of New York. Its oak wood and stone walls, soft carpet, and fire place in the living room leave it with the perfect Christmas setting. The woods behind the house are full of bare trees with the occasional ever green. My grandparents own half of the forest, including the pond that is usually frozen over by this time of the year. This winter is different, when we got to their house there was no snow on the ground, the pond was still completely liquid, and it was around 40 degrees outside. It still hasn't snowed yet and we  are beginning to worry that it may cancel our skiing plans.
    We had a huge meal of steak, potato salad, and much more. At the end of the dinner grandma brought out the rice pudding. The rice pudding is a Swedish tradition that we have done for as long as I can remember. Grandma makes rice pudding and drops an almond into one of the dishes, the person who gets the one with the almond puts baby Jesus in the cradle and gets good luck for the next year.
    When dinner was over we all went to the living room to open gifts. My older cousin Kevin and I made a fire in the fire place. When everyone settled down we all started giving gifts to each other, we saved the gifts from our family for the next morning.  Got my grandparents gave me $100 and my aunt and uncle also gave me money. I can't wait until tomorrow, I could really use some snow.

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