As is tradition, we met up with some friends at the China Star Chinese food buffet tonight. We do this every year on Christmas Eve. This year the kids have renamed it The Pig Out Buffet.
Even though the dumplings were questionable, and the tea refills came sporadically, we had a great time mixing and matching food. Alex, in particular, looked like he was having fun mixing and matching ice cream and broccoli and then trying to convince the other kids to eat it. This compelled me to tell the story of how, in high school, a few of us replaced the cream in our Twinkies with mayonnaise to thwart an obnoxious Twinkie thief. Ha ha! Oh, Twinkie Mayo barf in the cafeteria! Good times.
At dinner, the kids (there were seven kids in all) tried out some Christmas carols, which would have been obnoxious if the restaurant were filled. But since we were the only table on our side of the entire place, it was hard to tell them to stop the cheer.
Afterward, while we were checking out, I tried to impress the China Star owner by saying Merry Christmas in Mandarin. It sounds something like shen-dan-qwy-luh, and I'm sure I slaughtered it since she immediately corrected my pronunciation. At the same time though, her eyes and smile grew wide and she said thank you in Chinese. I could understand that one!
With my Chinese mastery under my belt, we headed home to take care of thre other traditional things: get the cookies and milk out for Santa, toss out some reindeer food on the lawn, and read "The Polar Express" with everyone huddled around right before bed.
And then, our outside landing lights still on but our indoor lights off, the kids shuffled off to bed, whispering among themselves about their wake-up plan for the morning (Megan wanted to set her alarm, but we told her she wouldn't have to worry about that).
Silent and still, we waited for the magic.
聖誕快樂!
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