Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving has been so much fun! It is one of the first holidays that I have been able to get completely off from work and it is totally worth the cut in the paycheck :) We had a pretty small Thanksgiving with BIG food! I got over to my mom's house at 2pm to help her cook. Many people think that this would be disasterous, as many people might think that I am a horrible cook. Well, my secret came out, I'm not as horribly cooking-retarded as people think. Because of my Mom's injury to her wrist she couldn't really do very much, so with Brent's help we had to virtually cook all of the entree's ourselves. I really haven't cooked or baked anything in a while, but I found that it wasn't as hard to get back into the swing of things as I had thought it would be. I made cherry cream cheese pies, the stuffing, fudge, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the green beans. Mmmm... I love Thanksgiving! When I finished gluteneoning myself I could barely breathe and my family had to roll me into the living room where I briefly fell asleep. I felt like Violet from Willy Wonka. It was great!




We decided that after Ashley started off the Scrabble game that we were playing with a cross bearing the word "devil" (seen backwards from "lived") that she cursed our Thanksgiving...
She later demonstrated her relationship to the start of the Scrabble game.


The next day my sister and I committed to waking up at 4am to get the good deals... this really didn't happen, but we did sleep in and we still went shopping around 2pm. We got my sister some new things for her apartment that she just moved into and I was able to buy 1 present. I was impressed :) It was great to spend time with my sister and mom doing that. My sister also showed me how talented her cat was by walking him. I always used to make fun of people who walked their cats, and I did the same with her when she brought out the leash and dragged the cat across the floor because he did not want to be walked. She will be one of those people who puts their kids on leashes.


Today we met up with all of my Uda cousins and had a girls day out! It has been so long since everyone has been in the same vicinity as the others, so this was most enjoyable! We went to lunch at Los Hermanos and later to the Twilight movie. I don't care what everyone else says, I thought that the movie was for the most part good. I was surprised at it actually. Usually when I see remakes of books I'm not impressed, but while there were excessively cheesy moments (purposefully - in my opinion as a satirical play off the book), I found it well made and unique in its cinematography. It was my time well spent.



I have truly had a wonderful holiday! It has been so great to spend time with my family and friends. I am truly thankful for them and all of the good things that I have in my life!

My Faza

My dad has been in town for the past couple of days and it has been great! It had been a while since I had seen him. He came out mainly to help me find a new car. My recent car has been an utter nightmare to say the least. The transmission has gone out and in the year that I have owned it I have taken it to the mechanic at least 5 times. I will never own a Jetta again...the brand hates me and I am cursed. Hopefully the same will not be true for the new car which my dad and I found. Because of the negative equity that I'm experiencing with my Jetta I had to find a car that was around $2000 under bluebook. I found a Lancer that was exactly that by some kind of miracle and will be picking it up on Tuesday. It feels good to finally have all of this car stuff wrapped up. I mean, I still have to sell my Jetta, but I'm glad that I have a mode of transportation that will get me places faster and warmer than the train. I still think that I will make an honest effort to ride the train though on days that are nice and whenever I have the opportunity.
Other than that, we HAVE been able to do some fun things too (at the expense of me getting any studying done)! On Friday night we went bowling. It had also been a really long time since I had bowled, but much to my surprise I kicked everyone's booties the first round and landed a whopping score of 148! I don't think that I have ever grossed such a high score, but I sure surprised everyone. The following are pictures of our fun times. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of the score board because people were pretty bitter that I won (I'm not the most graceful winner -- or loser for that matter :)) I think that I had made some enemies by the second round and ended up being last place... I should probably rethink my competitive nature considering that Monopoly is no longer a game that I am allowed to participate in :)
Brent trying unsuccessfully to beat me!

My Dad's getting kinda old and needed some special assistance from the kiddie bowler. He refused the bumpers much to our chagrin.

My sister and I

The Family and then some.

Me beating everyone.

On Saturday we went to the James Bond movie. I struggled through the movie as I usually do due to the lack of actual story line, the disconnect in plot, and the uber-exploitave manner of females merely for their sexuality. I realize this comes with a long tradition of Bond movies, but I can never quite get over the treatment of women both visually and within the plot. That aside, the cinimatography was beautiful and the explosions were always pretty cool. The best part was just spending time with my family, a passtime that I rarely get to partake in. I hope to make events like this more fluent in the future.
Last night we all got together again for my brother-in-laws Ultimate Fighting Championship party. I only really saw about 5 seconds of the last fight which I was content with. I'm not huge into the UFC/WWF stuff, and I'm sure people will be offended to see that I put the two in the same category even, but I was just glad for another chance to get together and eat Karl's mom's amazing cooking. We also put together a care package for my younger brother who is out on his mission. I really wanted to get him excited for Christmas, so we giftwrapped every item that we put into the package down to each package of breathmints seperately. We got a little into it and I'm sure Sean will love it!

Update

The past couple of weeks have been insane! I can't begin to describe some of the happenings, but one of a more regrettable note included taking my mom to the hospital for a cut that albiet turned into a giant debacle. On the bright side she is still alive, but you never realize the mortality of your parents more than when it is put into question by such a situation. The thing that absolutely amazes me is her endurance, but even more, the positive aura that she emits in whatever circumstance we are in. She ends up having everyone love her, and consequentially, she gets star treatment. No one makes me more proud than she does and no one makes me more relieved to know that they are alive than her (Please see her for details, she tells a much better story than I). While I would like to be better at having my camera with me at all times, but even more, remembering that I actually usually have it in my purse, I do not have any pictures that I can transfer onto here to show you the gruesome details of her experience. I can tell you that at one point when the doctor was bending my mom's gnarled wrist (if you are of the faint of stomach you might want to skip this part) to inspect her injury, that an awful lot of blood shot across the room at my sister and I - it was kinda spurting to her heart beat. Apparently the glass had cut her artery. The pictures are in my phone. Anyway, I also had the pleasure of babysitting for my cousin Sarah. I felt so honored because I think that I was one of the first babysitter's that Noa has ever had. I must say that I admire his parents bravery to put him in my hands for a full 3 hours, but they did, and we had a good time! He made some interesting faces at me, and I think that I was able to get a pic of him with a half smile on his face. Ok, no smiles there, but at one point, I'm not lying, he smiled at me, and it was good :) This probably isn't the best pic of me, but I think his bored facial expression tells you exactly how much fun Aunt Mandy really was. I was glad to spend a small amount of time with my bestest friend too, it had been a while, and I like to hear all the funny stories about her entrance into parenting. For anyone who knows her, they need to ask her about the "mole" story...wow...
Other than that, I have mainly been working and doing my school thing. I recently reduced my hours so that I could focus more on my studies, and couldn't be more happy about my decision. In my 4 years of school I haven't ever felt like I had so much study time :) Now is that a guarantee that I will get better grades...? Here is the level of productivity that our front desk staff exhibits on a lower occupancy day... We felt that our new front office supervisor needed to provide new vision and insight to our cause. We like to keep our eyes peeled for opportunities to deliver amazing customer service! And our bellmen getting in on the action. It was a pretty exciting and eventful day for us.
One last thing... I had the opportunity to go to a baptist church last Sunday with my friend Richard. It was a pretty neat experience and the music was incredible! Richard and I were the minority in the audience. He was required to go for his ethnic studies class, his professor was in the choir. The neat thing was that this was the first Sunday after the elections, and it truly was a celebration. I have to say that these elections were inspiring. I was plesantly surprised at the number of people in our nation that voted. I remember hearing that more people in the United States voted on American Idol than they did in the past election and feeling ashamed for my lack of participation in the past election when I could have voted. I vowed to not do the same for this election, and knowing that my vote was counted (even though my dad said it wouldn't because I was in a red state...)was inspirational. Both electoral candidates speeches were inspirational, and it was definately a monumental occasion as Brent and I watched the result. I will always remember what was said both on the screen and off, and am hopeful that we might be able to turn around some of the negative things affecting not only Americans due to the economic crisis, but to other countries as well. But I digress from my initial story...
I hope to go back to this church next Sunday and take my mom because I think that she will like it just as much as I did, merely for how kind the people were to us. Here is a clip of the choir. I don't know if you can get much from it, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. And if you can hear me talking in it I'm sorry I don't realize that even though I know that the camera picks up the sound of the choir, that it would actually pick up my voice which is closest to the camera.