Family Gathering

I love, love family gatherings. As in. It's one of the reasons that when I have work I'd like to have weekend and holiday off so I can attend every gathering. I really wouldn't miss if for anything. Do I sound I am crazy with my family? Yes, I am. I love my family. Especially the SOYANGCO side. We all grew up really close with each other. I could really say that my cousins and I all grew up together that now that we're not kids anymore, we can still talk about the things we used to do when we were younger and will laugh at it. And we'll laugh about everything. We really do have fun together and it's one thing I miss a lot. We used to spend Christmas and New Year's together. But now we still managed to see each other once in a while.

Our most recent gathering was yesterday at my uncle's house in Pasig. My parents, aunts, uncles and cousins went there at around 10am in time for lunch. I came at 3pm because I had classes at Graduate School. As usual, we feasted on so many foods. My cousins and I were talking that we are not the family that eats at restaurant a lot because we know to cook really good food. The foods that we had yesterday weren't really healthy but it was REALLY yummy. We had roasted pig (whole pig), crispy pata (another pig), kare kare (beef in peanut sauce) that is paired with a bagoong (shrimp paste), crabs, puto and dinuguan (family's favorite), desserts, and fresh fruits. After eating, we danced using the XBox 360 of my cousins. It was even more fun because we can't choose when to dance. It was a draw lots. We were so noisy like kids. After dancing, we got tired and it was our excuse for eating again. My cousin, Jor el, bought isaw (chicken and pig's intestine) and barbecue. My uncles grilled it for us. My cousins and I, again, ate A LOT. We also had grilled mussels which was so good because it was fresh. We also had couple of drinks and for our dinner, guess what we had??? JOLLIBEE CHICKEN JOY. Hahahahaa. Yes, we had fast food. My uncle got a free food from Jollibee and Chowking which we consumed once again. We love food, don't we??? We really do!!!

At past 9:00 pm, we had to leave because we have to go back to Bataan. I wish we could have stayed longer for another round of dancing and eating. I really miss my relatives and I also wish we could do it more often. It's one family tradition that we'd like to pass to younger generations. And we want our younger cousins to grow up really close to each other just like we are.