Giving the thanks.

Hello world of the interwebs! Welcome back. 

Thanksgiving break was freaking awesome. Any break from school is awesome, but it was especially nice to go home for the first time all semester and spend time with my family. I flew home on Wednesday night and we ate some dinner and hung out a little bit. (side note, my dad bought me a selfie stick on one of his China trips so I had a lot of fun with that but unfortunately I left it in San Ramon) 

Thursday was the BIG DAY. For those of you who don't know, Thanksgiving is easily my father's favorite holiday. We are big foodies and love to cook extravagant meals, so a day devoted to a huge feast is easily our favorite holiday. I think he would be very upset if any of us ever missed a Thanksgiving, because it is a big deal! 

Here's my first selfie stick photo. 

After cooking in the morning and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade and Dog Show, we got ready and took our Christmas card photos. While I waited for the turkey to finish cooking I had some solid cuddle time with Dewey and took a great selfie to commemorate the occasion. 

Here's our Christmas card picture! Taken by my iPhone's self timer in our backyard. 

And another selfie stick picture while my dad finished bringing the food into the dining room.

While my love for Dewey is quite vocal, many people don't realize how much I love Charlotte. I know a lot of people don't like cats, but I strongly believe that's just because they haven't met the right cats. Charlotte came into my life on a fateful Thanksgiving day in 2002. Let's recount the story of Charlotte and I meeting. 

My mom was going to get a kitten for Christmas that year, and she had always wanted a Tonkinese cat. My dad found a breeder and she brought over her latest two litters of kittens to our house (7 cats in total). Best. Day. Ever. There were 5 boys and 2 girls. Being that I was a 7 year old girl, I was adamant that we needed to get a female cat. While my parents and sister were becoming enamored with a sweetheart male cat, I found Charlotte. She crawled into my lap and began purring and I refused to let her go. Since the rest of my family recognized how sweet the male cat was, and how quickly I had bonded with the female, the breeder offered us a special deal for the both of them and we ended up with 2 kittens. That was more fun anyways because we came up with fun names. Charlotte and I have been together through Texas, Johannesburg, and San Ramon and I still couldn't begin to imagine falling asleep at home without hearing her purring next to me in bed. 

She also understands me when I meow to her so there's that. 

On Friday I went out shopping in the morning with my dad and then went home to watch the U of A/ASU game. It was awesome! So awesome that I fell asleep in the middle of it. It's ok because my dad stayed awake and clued me in. Then I woke up and we went to dinner.

On Saturday my dad and Katie both flew out of town so my mom and I went shopping (again) and then had dinner and went to the movies. It was such a fun girls day! Of course we had to get Vitality Bowls for lunch - it's a must on every San Ramon trip. 

After dinner we walked around Downtown Walnut Creek and I had my first CREAM sandwich in months. It was just as heavenly as always. 

I got back to Tucson and back into the swing of things pretty quickly. The Monday after break I had a huge project worth 1/3 of my grade due. I had a ton of other papers, projects, etc. that week so I was doing a lot of homework. I finished my final project for my online class too so now I am 100% done with that class. I am glad that I buckled down last week/before break because now my load is much lighter than it would have been and I am not as stressed out. 

This Friday night, we had a potluck at Dakota/Bert/Rory's house to watch the Pac-12 Championship game. It was kind of a sad game to watch, but still fun to be with friends. We are still so proud of our team for making it this far. No one expected we would end up in the top 10!

Saturday was totally crazy! We went to line up for the basketball game against Gonzaga at noon. The game started at 3:15 and was probably the most intense game I've ever been to. We were neck and neck the entire game and went into overtime. I honestly forgot to breathe and got super light headed at multiple points in the game. 

The game didn't end until 5:40 which stunk because Lauren and I had makeup appointments (using coupons I had) at Sephora at 6, and we were supposed to be there ten minutes early. We ended up not even getting there until 6:30 with the game traffic. We finished up around 7:30 and rushed home to change for the dance. The Winter Formal was super fun! Shoutout to DJ Gabe and DJ Luca. The bomb diggity. Today was seemingly the first normal church day in quite a long time which was nice. After church Syd and I watched 3 Christmas movies so you could say we've had a really productive day. All in the spirit of Christmas and gearing up for finals!

Luckily I only have two actual finals (the others are papers/projects, of which I have finished 2 out of 3). I know these next few weeks will go by super fast! I'll be back home again in 12 short days. 

Peace out.