THANKSgiving

Oh, there are so many things to write about! The past three days I've been making mental notes about what I wanted to post about and I finally made my way to a computer so here we go. Thursday, as you all know, was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was never really a big deal in my house starting around high school. This was when my Grandma got too sick to do the whole big extended family meal thing which was always fun/exhausting. My mom's side of the family is huge and loud and very ahem, Midwest so Thanksgivings were always 5-7 hours long, filled with political debates and tons of carb-loading. I definitely became an Introvert so Thanksgiving was never really my favorite holiday.

Since Thanksgivings weren't that big of a deal I knew that I wouldn't be flying home once I moved to California. I was determined to create new, fun and unique Thanksgiving experiences. My first Thanksgiving in LA I went to the beach with friends, got a boxed meal from Whole Foods and took photos for my Christmas card. I also texted every person I knew and rubbed it in that I was still in flip-flops and a t-shirt at the end of November. The photo shoot was super fun and yielded some pretty fun results!

I included this mainly because it was the day after I got my hair cut by Princess for the first time, plus AJ was teaching me how to smile with my eyes...even with sunglasses on.

Last Thanksgiving AJ was on duty and most of the RDs were out of town so we did some research and decided to do service for Thanksgiving. We went up to Pasadena and helped serve meals for needy families at a gorgeous park in the middle of town. It was one of the largest Thanksgiving service days in California and we helped over 4,000 people! After service, we had a delicious meal that LMU catered (for free!) and then had a three-hour ping-pong tournament in the Corner Pocket. For the record, I killed AJ.

This year more people were going to be around so it seemed as though a Thanksgiving meal was in order. I ended up going two different places and they were both delicious! To round out the weekend AJ, Briana and I decided to go wine tasting in Temecula which is in between LA and San Diego and also inland. We left somewhat early on Friday morning and although I was nursing a hangover from the night before (I made friends with $2 bottles of wine from Trader Joe's) I was excited for a break from reality which brings me to my ultimate point of this post.

• I am thankful for creating new traditions. I have always been a stickler for keeping to traditions. This can be traced back to me as a five-year-old insisting that my family go to the midnight church service on Christmas eve because that's what we do on Christmas Eve! This continued to college where I found myself especially drawn to my sorority's rituals because there was something endlessly fascinating and unique about participating in something that women had been doing for over a century. With all of that being said, I'm starting to realize more and more that it is okay and even dare I say fun to create new traditions in my world. The sense of ownership was wonderful and there was also an innate sense of freedom that went along with saying "I'm not sure what I'm doing for Thanksgiving" because honestly, who's to say what constitutes a tradition? To me, these pictures scream "whoa, I'm thankful for my life" just as much as college football, jumping in leaf piles or pumpkin pie.

• I am grateful for people who get me. On the way back from wine tasting on Friday, Yas made all of us describe each other in three words. If you are thinking that this sounds suspiciously like a teambuilder, then you would be right! Granted, we were all (minus our driver) fairly intoxicated from three rapid wine tasting tours with laaaarge tastings combined with no real meal to speak of, but I still felt like my descriptions were so dead on I had to write them down. Yas, Briana and AJ described me as (in no particular order) caring, jovial, humble, engaged, articulate, delightful, kind, funny and curious. Not only are all of these words I would use to describe myself, the explanations behind them were equally interesting, enlightening and touching. The whole thing was simply wonderful and it was made better by the fact that Yas and I share the very emotional side to our personalities so we were bawling in the backseat, Briana was enjoying the madness of the moment and AJ slowly slide down in his seat when it came to his turn to hear his words. My point to this post is that I really love the people who understand and appreciate me so to Carmen, Denielle, Gretch, Jolene, Melissa, AJ, Yas, Briana and Liz I am indeed very, very grateful for all of you!