Thanks for Thanksgiving

 I tend to go on a blogging hiatus when I go home for any length of time. I need to work on that. Anyways! I hope your (whoever you might be that reads this) Thanksgiving was as great as mine.  It was a super laid back family day.  I eventually got over my bitterness about having to share my birthday with this very prominent holiday.  The whole weekend was just super relaxing and refreshing. I love being home.  I also love getting our house decorated for Christmas!

Can you believe that it's really only 26 days away? Insane! I can't wait to go back home and be with my family again and then I get to spend time with my love!  Now I just need to survive finals. 

Candace Mann Photography

My sister, Candace, has become an amazing photographer over the years and finally has her official website up and running! Anyone who reads my blog needs to check it out and if you ever have a need for a photographer, I highly recommend her!  She's taken multiple pictures of James and me and they're some of my all time favorites.

http://www.candacemannphotography.com/

Happy Thanksgiving!

I normally love Thanksgiving, but this year I have a love/hate relationship with it.  Tomorrow is my 22nd birthday but it really doesn't feel much like my birthday at all.  Every thought that I've had concerning tomorrow has been about Thanksgiving.  I don't even know if I'm gonna have a cake!  Maybe we'll just stick some candles in a pumpkin pie or something (Not that there's anything wrong with that because we just did the same thing for Kacey's birthday last week.).   Anyways, tomorrow's really not about me, it's about being thankful for everything that we have....and for eating massive amounts of food. 

I know this is a few hours early, but there will be no blogging on my part tomorrow so I thought I'd get it done now.  I made it home last night after driving for over 7 and a half hours, at least two of which were spent sitting in traffic.  Man, I love being home, especially for the holidays.  The grandparents got in this afternoon and already the house is filled with amazing smells and lots of laughter. 

I'm always thankful for my family, because they're amazing, but it's times like these when I really truly feel overwhelmed with just how much I love them and how thankful I am that I'm a part of this craziness.  When I'm "grown up" and have a family of my own, I hope and pray that my kids feel the same way about their family.

Another part of my life that I'm super thankful for tonight is James.  He called me to wish me happy birthday, NC time, because there's no way he would have been able to stay up till three in the morning.  I know that there are people in our lives who think we're crazy for being in the long distance relationship that we are, but he literally brings me so much joy and I wouldn't not want to be with him just because he lives so far away.  I wish more than anything we could have been able to get him here this weekend! 

I guess what it boils down to is I'm thankful for all the love in my life.  There are so many other people that could  be apart of this blog right now because I've been blessed with so many good and amazing friends!  I hope that ya'll have at least one person that you're thankful for this year. 

Have an amazing Thanksgiving tomorrow! 

LB Thanksgiving

Last night Kacey, Hannah, Karen, and I had our first Thanksgiving together.  We cooked almost all of the traditional fixings and watch every single Thanksgiving episode of Friends.  We had a lot of fun and I'm procrastinating writing a paper so I decided to share some pictures.

If you can't tell, yesterday was "wear stripes" day in our house as well.  I can assure you that this was totally not planned at all, but we certainly had a lot of fun with it!

I get to go home to Salinas tomorrow and I'm pretty much jumping around with excitement, which is another reason why I can't concentrate on my paper.  I've got lots to do between now and then so I better hop to it!

Recap

Last night I wrote that Hannah and I were feeling lame just sitting on our couch on a Saturday night with nothing to do.  We started to feel motivated to go out, so we did a little researching and ended up on 2nd Street in Long Beach at Murphy's Pub for a drink and for the sake of being out.  After we had some fun there we ended up heading over to The Gaslamp, because we knew there was no cover to get in. 

We ended up going on their Metallica tribute band night.  We noticed that every older man in Long Beach with hair past their shoulders was there, we were probably the youngest girls in whole place, and people are super fun to watch.  I've never been in a situation like this where I couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculousness going on around us!  It was super hilarious and super fun.  I'm glad that we decided to go out and play last night. 

Rock on.

Photos

Over the last month or two Hannah and I have gone on photo adventures.  She's had to do several projects for one of her classes and since we don't have anything to do on Saturdays, I go with her. Today we revisited her childhood and captured this...

We were looking at each other funny because someone saw us.  Hilarious.  I love it though.

Now we're realizing how lame we are because it's Saturday night and there was a bunch of fun stuff going on and we're sitting on our couch doing nothing! 

I Love...

Rare three hour phone conversations...

with no pauses...

lots of laughter...

and lots of fun...

Photo provided by: http://www.thefrisky.com

P.S. I don't think I could ever find a more fitting picture for this post and my life even if I wanted to!

My Thankful "Article"

Today in our student paper the Union weekly there was two page spread of "Thankpinions" (If you want to read them just click on the link to Issue 67.12: Mashed Potato Moments and scroll in a few pages.  I must warn you though that the staff is pretty lose with their writing and language.).  One of these "Thankpinions" was about my "crush" Anderson Cooper.  Mmm....need a visual? Don't know who I'm talking about? Here you go!

Photo provided by someone on photobucket

 

I thought about just stealing it and making it my own to be silly, but then I started to think about what I really am thankful for this week and chose to write my own, original "Thankpinion".

If any of you are remotely close to me, you will know or have heard by now that my living situation last year was pretty....not ideal.  I've accepted the fact that it was for a reason (even though I don't know what it was for), but I wasn't happy.  I lived in my room, only coming out when necessary and didn't feel one bit at home.  I've made more memories and had more fun in these last three months of this semester than I did while I was living in my other house.  Moving in with Hannah and Kacey was the best thing I could have ever done.  Our home feels like my home, which is an amazing feeling.  Our home is filled with laughter and friends most of the time and that's something that has always been super important to me.  This might sound a bit silly, but in all honestly, I love that I can have a nice cold beer or a glass of wine, that boys can crash on my couch if they need to, and Corinne always feels like she can come here for as long as she wants. I'm so thankful for our beautiful apartment and I'm so thankful for Kacey and Hannah.  I can't wait to decorate for Christmas with them and spend the rest of this school year being roommates and making more amazing memories to add to the ones that I already have. 

That's my "Thankpinion" for right now.  I think I might write a few more this week before Thanksgiving/my birthday rolls around.  I get to go home in six days! I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am!

Part Two

Alright so Part Two of my awesome weekend is going to be mostly about Saturday night.  I spent it with Hannah, Kacey, Katrina, Mitch, Lance, Nathan, and Timmy at the Wreck Fest of Champions, aka Long Beach's first Roller Derby Championships.  The Terminal Island Tootsies and the Bixby Rollerettes faced off in the Long Beach Dome and it was amazing! Here are some pictures.

We also had an amazing time before and after riding around in Timmy's van and eating at In-N-Out for a midnight dinner.  Kacey's birthday was on Sunday so we sang loudly to her while we were there and then came home and watched Whip It. I swear this weekend was one of the best.  Hope you guys had an awesome one too!