Day 122: Christmas Eve

Tonight we had dinner at my mom's cousin's house. I have never been there before. They had their house custom built. It is a very nice place. It is a three level house decorated with contemporary furniture.

There was so much food. There was garlic toast, salad, beef stew, bbq ribs, steak, shrimp pasta, potato salad and bean salad. For dessert, there was a tiramisu cake, fruit and homemade cream puffs. These are the best cream puffs I have ever had! My mom's cousin is the best at making the cream puffs. She learned to bake them from her mother in Vietnam. The filling isn't whipped cream like at the stores. It's more of a custard filling.

I was excited to go tonight because I would be seeing some cousins that I don't see very often. I wasn't sure who was coming. My mom has a large family. She has lots of cousins. It's the second cousins who are around my age which I wanted to see. Some have kids and I haven't met their kids before. My cousins and I hung out with some second cousins who are girls. They are in their late teens. When they were younger it was hard to hold a conversation with them. It didn't seem like I had much in common with them. Now since they have grown up a bit, it is much more fun to talk to them. We talked about boys, relationships, stalkers and clubbing. At one point there were two male cousins who joined our conversation. They gave us their two cents on stalkers and relationships. One thing I learned from the conversation tonight was that young teen boys are sensitive and emotional and expect the girls to ask them out. That is so different from when I was a teenager. Boys were more tough and they asked the girls out.