Lake Ontario<\/a>) and my Uncle had two daughters. \u00a0I remember Chanukah in Syracuse at my Aunt’s house. \u00a0Most of it is hard to remember as I was fairly young, but there are plenty of things that still stand out to me today.<\/p>\nFor one, I remember my dad stopping on the side of the highway while driving up once in the family’s blue Honda Accord wagon. \u00a0The snow was coming hard and my dad was worried we’d get stuck in the snow if we didn’t wait for it to slow down. \u00a0We stopped under a bridge if memory serves (if I’m wrong my parents will tell me after they read this).<\/p>\n
My Aunt’s house in Syracuse has two floors although we spent most of the time in the house on the main floor. \u00a0The main entrance to the house led to a hallway towards the kitchen and living room. \u00a0most of my memories from that house were from inside the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The bottom floor of the house had a pool table. \u00a0I didn’t know how to play pool and nobody ever bothered to teach me how to since I could barely see as high as the pool table. \u00a0I can remember randomly throwing pool balls at each other. \u00a0I thought I knew how to play pool. \u00a0Then again, today I think I can play pool, but my attempts are pathetic at best.<\/p>\n
Also in the downstairs part of the house was a guest bedroom, bedrooms for some of my cousins and an unfinished storage area. \u00a0I don’t honestly remember if it was during Chanukah, but I found a skateboard in the storage area. \u00a0Having recently watched Back to the Future for the first time, I was so excited to see a skateboard. \u00a0One of my friends back in Millington also had a skateboard. \u00a0It was a short, thin skateboard with an orange plastic deck and really tall wheels. \u00a0I got lots of entertainment on that board attempting to ride it. \u00a0My parents must have known that day that the X Games were not in my future.<\/p>\n
I remember my dad telling me that I shouldn’t trust commercials when I was little. \u00a0I didn’t really understand what he meant by this, but as a little kid generally agreed with him…well, that is with one exception. \u00a0There was a remote control car I saw on TV that looked SOOO cool. \u00a0I don’t honestly remember the name of it, but the kid in the commercial looked like he was having so much fun. \u00a0The car had wheels high enough that there wasn’t a top or bottom and the car could do flips. \u00a0Like pretty much every commercial, it explain all the important things you needed to know at the end and said them really quickly (like batteries not included). \u00a0This car used a specialized rechargeable battery that you could pretty much only get at hobby stores and Radio Shack. \u00a0Upon realizing this I vaguely remember having a tantrum and my dad taking me to the mall in Syracuse to look for batteries. \u00a0I don’t remember when we got the batteries, but I remember the car itself being a major disappointment. \u00a0I don’t trust commercials for things more than ever now.<\/p>\n
We spent a couple of Christmases out west at my Uncle Peter and Uncle Mike’s house. \u00a0It was always refreshing to leave the cold of New Jersey to head out to Laguna Beach and Palm Springs. \u00a0I always had fun playing with their dogs Aki Bono (like the sumo wrestler) and Ting and then later on with their dog Bourbon who is about the same size as a handle of Maker’s Mark Bourbon.<\/p>\n
The first house that I visited in Palm Springs that my Uncles’ owned was a pretty large\u00a0stucco\u00a0house. \u00a0Their neighbor was a published author who was offended to be referred to as a writer. \u00a0I still don’t know what the difference is between an author and a writer (feel free to let me know with a comment), but I took to referring to the neighbor with our family as the painter.<\/p>\n
The house had a couple of citrus trees outside of it. \u00a0It was always a treat to have fresh lemons, limes, oranges and tangelos so close by. \u00a0The house itself was a giant circle centered around a kitchen with tile floors. \u00a0The kitchen had a giant island in the middle of it. \u00a0I remember a Thanksgiving and a Christmas prepared in that kitchen. \u00a0Both of my uncles are great cooks.<\/p>\n
Looking down from the kitchen you could see the pool. \u00a0In late December it was warm enough to use the hot tub, but rarely the pool itself. \u00a0The opposite was true when we visited once during the spring. \u00a0The desert gets HOT and stays that way through the summer.<\/p>\n
Another treat of being in the desert was the street fair. \u00a0On Thursdays, the main drag of Palm Springs closed down and was filled with vendors. \u00a0It was always a treat to see all of the fun stuff people came out to sell. \u00a0Outside the fair, but on the main drag was a store that sold sports memorabilia. \u00a0I was able to get a giant thing of baseball cards there \u00a0which kept me occupied for hours as I sorted them by team and player.<\/p>\n
Holidays early on were also spent with my mom’s side of the family. \u00a0My mom was one of four siblings, all of the others being boys. \u00a0Most of the full family affairs with my mom’s side of the family were when my grandparents were still around.<\/p>\n
My grandparents lived together in the same house most of their adult lives. \u00a0My uncles and my mother all grew up in that same house. \u00a0The room that I knew as the living room in my grandparent’s house was once the garage (don’t worry, they finished it, it wasn’t a garage anymore). \u00a0I had a tendency to sit close to the tv in front of my grandfather and my grandmother would yell at me telling me that I was going to go blind from sitting too close.<\/p>\n
During most holidays when the whole family came to town, soccer became a part of the celebration. \u00a0My Uncle Russell would gather some of us up and take us over to a park with a ball to play soccer. \u00a0I played for a team at the time so it was always a treat. \u00a0My cousin\u00a0Jonathan\u00a0would always come to play and was a far better soccer player than I ever was, but it was always a good time anyway.<\/p>\n
Despite her best efforts, my grandmother was known to have meals come out very fragmented. \u00a0She just never seemed to be able to time a meal right. \u00a0It wasn’t uncommon for the starch to come out first and then the main course half an hour later and then the salad at some other random time.<\/p>\n
Holidays with my family have always been a special time. \u00a0They are when as a family we have\u00a0reconnected. \u00a0This time of year can be tough, but it is when we laugh, cry, eat, and whatever else it is our families do. \u00a0Holidays for me are happy times to remember where I came from and how I grew up and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s Christmas Eve as I tap away at the keys of my MacBook. \u00a0I’m up in my bedroom back in Atlanta (well Marietta to be more specific, but I do’t think that really matters). I wanted to talk about the holidays. \u00a0Tomorrow is Christmas, which as a Jew probably shouldn’t mean very much to me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}