Have you ever just wanted to enjoy some quiet quality time with your family? Most people would say yes, my answer is OF COURSE. But, with my family, quiet is never an option anymore and quality…well that’s out of the question. On Thanksgiving morning most houses are filled with a surplus of aromas: turkey, chicken, pies, vegetables, rice and more. That holds true from my home as well. But you’ll also have plenty of sounds to keep you awake: yelling, screaming, crying, some more yelling, some more screaming... My sister recently moved in with my two younger nephews, and everything has become louder and much busier than my mother and I are used to. I can only imagine what this years Thanksgiving is going to have in store.

My mother has a tendency to call me for any and every thing it is almost like she is focused on keeping me busy. Not that I already don’t have millions of things to do during school vacations (which I usually don’t), but I like to relax during my vacations. She wants me to help her prepare the food as she slaves over the stove and the sultry turkey in cooking in the oven. I need to make sure the house is cleaned, set up the table and now take care of my baby nephew because I know my sister wont…we’ll get into that later. Hopefully since more people are living with us I won’t have to do everything myself.

The problem is, my baby nephew Deni is two years old, thinks that he is a big boy already. Especially when he is in the same room as my puppy Daisy. They are like Yin and Yang complete opposites but they complete each other. My nephew has a tendency to bully Daisy, which is why we never leave them in a room alone together. He even pulled her tail one day and she let out a yelp! However, Daisy can also be a bully towards Deni. One day, Deni crouched down and started teasing my dog, and you know how dogs are, they always have a tendency to bark; so when Daisy started barking back by nephew started swinging his arms. Daisy began jumping and growling, and Deni started screaming and stomping. Next thing you know, they were like best friends, and were walking next to each other throughout the house like nothing ever happened. I can relate though, sometimes my dog and I fight but she is my most reliable friend. My baby nephew also loves to give my dog food. He’d rather feed and play with her than to actually eat his own food. I can already tell that watching these two is probably going to be the hardest task added to my day; especially with all the food that is going to be around, my dog is going to have a buffet if I don’t watch out.

My oldest nephew Andy who is turning 13 also thinks he is a grown boy. He never listens to what any of the women in the family say. He is going through his rebellious stage and thinks he is an adult. But he also had his childish tendencies I can honestly say I’m pretty sure he has ADD. I remember move in day of college. I specifically told my nephew not to touch anything because I know how nosy he is. What is the first thing he does after I start unpacking? He touches everything. He kept asking me if he could keep my things, kept pacing around the room, and the only reason why I even brought him was to do the heavy lifting. I clearly told him not to touch anything and he obviously ignored me on purpose so I told him to leave the room and wait for me in the lounge and he didn’t listen to that either…naturally. Andy also has a tendency to never get full no matter how much you feed him. Somehow he could just have finished a meal, but if he sees someone else eating he’ll want more food. We have talked to him about this before, told him if he feels full not to force anymore food down his throat, but he’s like the human vacuum! Every time I’m eating something Andy’s eyes light up and he gets this cheesy smile as he’s getting ready to ask me for some food…even though he just ate. I can only imagine how this Thanksgiving is going to be. All that delicious smelling food laid out on the table, temptation island.

Like I mentioned earlier my sister Yesica has recently moved back in. My sister has a huge square head and a large body to match. She has jet-black hair...except for the chunks she missed at the bottom when she dyed it, they still show her old fiery red color patches. She likes to wear tiny tank tops that extenuate her gut and shorts. She has this ugly little piercing on her bottom lip that makes her look like she's trying too hard to be hip and young. I love my sister (sort of) but we just don’t get along. We weren’t raised together, so we are not very close, we don’t have that sibling bond. On the contrary we are complete opposites, and we kind of have a sibling rivalry that I’m pretty sure I’m winning. I am closer to my mother, I’ve graduated high school, I’m in college, and I’ve been working since the age of thirteen. All I can say for her is that she has given me two pretty awesome nephews and my mom two amazing grandchildren. She is not completely fluent in English, like my mother, so naturally she is going to have questions about what certain things in English say, directions, etc.… and I don’t mind translating, I understand I’m fortunate for having learned English at a young age. But, my sister is so obsessed with the social network Facebook all of her questions usually pertain to that. She’s always asking me how to rotate pictures, how to crop, how to add applications to her phone Not only that, but when she hollers at me for a favor from the room next door, she expects me to run over to her right away. Same thing happens when she interacts with my other nephew Andy, always yelling for him from down the hall instead of just getting up. When I don’t fly over she continues to call my name, just like my mother! That’s when I get annoyed because she could easily get up and come over to me since she’s the one who needs the favors not me, but we all know she won’t get her lazy behind up, even if it killed her. So imagine all this chaos going to go on Thanksgiving Day. My mother will be calling me to help her in the kitchen, my baby nephew and dog will probably be fighting and I’m just going to try and sleep (but we all know that won’t happen). I’m already annoyed being a babysitter/cleaner/cook & now I’ll have to listen to my older sister Yesica nagging at me asking me all sorts of questions instead helping me out. I’ll probably answer her questions because I don’t want to be rude and start fighting like always, or I might just ignore her and roll my eyes because they are such stupid and meaningless questions and I think she’s a waste of space.

I love my family, but I think back to my favorite Thanksgiving dinner my freshman year of high school and can’t help but compare that to my disappointing expectations of this year. Freshman year’s Thanksgiving dinner consisted of my mother, my aunt, my two cousins Romel and Lenyi, and I. My cousins and I love the movie Scary Movie 2. In the movie there is a part where the characters are having a dinner similar to Thanksgiving and one character licked their finger, stuck their finger in the turkey and said “my germs.” We found this so hilarious because it was so disgusting. So, that Thanksgiving we raced to pick the piece of the turkey we wanted to eat, liked our finger, poked it and yelled “my germs”. It was the race to get the best piece and it was a riot. We couldn’t stop laughing no matter how hard we tried. Tears were streaming down our faces and we felt victorious. Clearly we got the pieces we wanted because no one else would eat them. I loved that moment and it never happened again because my mom would kill us!

Hopefully this year’s Thanksgiving is indeed amazing and stress free but, I doubt it. Especially because my sister and I can barely stand to be in the same room together without being annoyed at each other’s presence and even if she won’t admit it…I will. If our family is not fighting about the rules in the house, or about splitting up the chores on a daily basis we will probably fight over the last piece of my mom’s famous Thanksgiving (and sometimes Christmas) egg custard. Happy Holidays Everyone!