2000 Miles Later...

Hey guys!

Happy Thanksgiving from MICHIGAN!!! It's chilly here for my Arizonian body:



Apologies for the blur, but this pic my sis snapped kinda sums it all up ;)

I honestly didn't have much to pack for my trip home. Just the necessities--laptop, camera, ipod, contacts, and hair straightener ;) Trust me, the hair straightener IS a necessity! Unfortunately, everyone else packed their life's possessions, so the flight dudes ended up having to check my carry-on anyway. Oh well, at least they didn't lose it.

The flight was alright--I was way out of it for the first few hours, where I just slept. I spent the last hour resting and listening to my iPod. The one bad thing was that when we landed, the gate opener person wasn't there. So we were all standing there for about 20 minutes waiting for the guy to come. The plane was really stuffy and uncomfortable by then!

After freezing my booty off waiting for my mom to drive up, we got home and had a delicious dinner! Since my sis and I are vegetarian, we won't be eating turkey tonight. We're all going to my uncle's house, so we just eat all the sides. We had our own little Thanksgiving dinner with this:



I used to laugh at the whole "tofurkey" thing, but it actually tastes pretty good! I had the tofurkey with stuffing:



AMAZING roasted veggies:



And a cranberry-apple dumpling thing my mom covered in cinnamon:



This was really good, too! Doughy and I love how the cranberries added a hint of sweetness.

After staying up WAY late talking, I woke up to The Best Breakfast Ever. Long-term readers, this may look familiar ;)



A vitatop parfait!!! I haven't had one of these in like, 3 months. They don't have vitatops in AZ stores, which is terribly sad. Anyway, this parfait was the best parfait in the history of parfaits--it's true! You can ask my family and they'll tell you I was singing that during the entire parfait making and consuming process ;)

So basically it was just a deep chocolate vitatop in a greek yogurt mixture of cocoa powder, cinnamon, and stevia. I also had a spoon of dark chocolate dreams pb with it. But it was AWESOME!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!


Q: What are you thankful for?

I'm thankful for my family and our good healthcare-- really, without it I don't know what I'd do. I'm also thankful for the opportunity to finally pursue an education in a field I'm passionate about. Being a kinesiology major this year has really made it clear how unhappy I was as a music major last year. I'm thankful I took a chance and changed my major. I finally love what I'm learning about!

I'm also thankful I have a comfortable level of living. I mean, I definitely have to watch my spending but I do have enough that I don't need to worry about how I'm going to pay the bills. Lately it's really hit me how lucky I am--there are so many people out there that are really struggling. I'm planning on doing a lot of volunteer work, both for the holiday season and also throughout the rest of the year. I've started a list of organizations/events I want to participate in, like gift-wrapping for charities and helping in toy drives. I'm also planning on volunteering at a soup kitchen. I want to do this for the holidays, but then I also want to get involved with a hunger organization for the rest of the year.

Another new thing is that I'm considering doing something like a medical mission in a year or so. I'm planning on joining our Global Health club next semester. My friend in kinesiology is going on one to Nicaragua over spring break where she'll be trained to give vaccines and check vitals, etc. for the people who desperately need them. I think it's an amazing opportunity and cause, and I feel like I have the potential to really make a difference.

Thankfully my class are really close together next semester, so I'll have more hours available in which to do all this. Over the past month, my eyes have really been opened to see how many people have it really badly off, and I feel like I have a duty to do what I can to help. So this was WAY long, but I felt like Thanksgiving would be a pretty good time to bring this up.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving, everyone! :)