The New Year's Eve at the Wun's

1/25/09 Finally, after eager anticipation, it is the Chinese New Year's Eve!!

The family dinner is held at Uncle William and Aunt Sherry's, as usual. It's eve so exciting to see my uncles, aunts and cousins again. Mom, Dad and I started making way to Uncle Williams by about 4:00pm. Everyone is there already! This is my first Chinese New Year at home in over a decade. Everyone warmly greeted me and everyone showered me with compliments on my success in weight loss. I guess there's looming worries also about how long I can keep this slimming effort up in view of the commencing Chinese New Year celebration, since it is a known fact that starting right this dinner one will be eating nonstop for about the next 10 days.

While Mom, Aunt Sherry, Aunt Cherie and Aunt Sherry's most abled Vietnamese domestic help Miss A-Hen busied about in the kitchen, everyone else just sits back and snacks away. The enormous coffee table at Uncle Williams' is piled with all kinds of goodies particularly prepared for the Chinese New Year--the mixed nuts, the oranges, the preserved plums, and the list goes on and on. There are no "kids" per se. All of us Wun cousins of my generation in the 30s are the kids.

Even sitting around watching TV and chatting w/ cousins was a lot of fun! Little did we know the snacking and chatting was just the beginning of a fun evening...