Holidays

Alicia, Erica, and I on Easter

Holidays are always extremely important to my family and I. Although the majority of my family members live in New York, in fact they all live on Long Island, we do not have many opportunities to get together.  Life often gets in the way of taking a day to visit with family. Regardless of how little we see each other regularly throughout the passing months, we always take the time to celebrate Christmas Eve, Easter and Thanksgiving together. As a child I always loved Christmas Eve the most, mainly because of the gifts I received from my family. Now as an adult I am beginning to notice how important this gathering as well as other gatherings are to my family. Each of my mothers siblings, there are seven total, 12 adults with their spouses, our grandparents and all of my cousins meet at my mother's twin sister's house to celebrate. This is important to me for many reasons but primarily because this is the only time of the year that we all see each other at the same time, making our times together about more than just presents.
Easter this year was held at my house, where my family and my grandparents live. We decided to have a small affair, so my mother invited her twin and her older sister along with their families to join us for dinner. Besides my sister and I, the only other person there our age is our cousin Alicia. She is between my sister and I age wise and has been our proverbial other sister since we both can remember. Alicia is also in the process of getting her bachelors degree finished and therefore we often do not get to see each other. I just love that no matter the length of time, we can talk and laugh as if we see each other everyday.

Vocabulary:
Majority: (noun)more than half of something or some period of time
"Life often gets in the way": (idiom) day to day activities prevent you from doing something else
Primarily:  the main reason for something
Affair: event
Proverbial: relates to an idiom, meaning not real

Vocabulary Exercise:
Use each word or phrase in a sentence

Grammar Point:
In this post I talked about people in my family and gave outside information to clarify what I wanted you to know about them. Setting off information with commas in a sentence is called an appositive. Ex: My mother's siblings, there are seven in total, came to our house for Thanksgiving. Although you would still be able to understand the sentence without the information in the appositive, it helps to set the scene.

Grammar Exercise:
Write a paragraph about a holiday or event that you celebrate with your family. Use appositives to give extra information about the people in your family and to set the scene.