Thanksgiving Break 2013

On Wednesday, after 13 hours in a car, I was home! It was so nice to be home for Thanksgiving this year, the first in four years. I'm sad I didn't get to see everyone though. Since it was a surprise that I was coming, some family made other plans and I wasn't able to see all my siblings. Luckily, I'll be back for Christmas in 21 days. 

This Thanksgiving was pretty special because we had eight Oregon State football players and 2 of their girlfriends join us for dinner since my cousin is a freshman on the team. My younger cousins had a blast playing with them and they were very entertaining. They were very friendly and enjoyable to have around. We had a lot of food, but they didn't eat as much as you would expect since some of them had the Civil War game (Oregon State vs University of Oregon) the next day and the ones that didn't play had to watch their weight. We played a game of Spoons with Fred, my cousin's roommate, and they all went swimming after dinner. It was a great day.

Yesterday was the Civil War and sadly we didn't win, for the sixth year in a row. We lost by one point, which is almost worse than losing by a lot just because we were SO CLOSE. It was fun how the family kept looking for my cousin and the players we had over the day before on TV. We saw them a few times. It was pretty exciting. 

I had also spent over an hour on the phone with Verizon. My grandma was on the phone for a while and we found out they had made a mistake and wanted me to change my phone number because of it. I was going to go along with it just because I didn't want to make things difficult for Nana, but I didn't really want to change my number. I took over the call and after over 2 hours on the phone between the two us, we finally got it resolved. Working at a call center has its perks because I definitely knew how to get them to fix it our way. I still have the same number :)

Today I spent most of the day shopping with my aunt and sister Sunhee. She has her first formal dance next week. She is in Jr. High and growing up so fast! We went to seven different stores before finding the dress. It was hard because she is small so it was hard finding the balance between something that fit but looked her age and not too childish, but we did it. One of the highlights of the day was watching her try to walk in heels for the first time. I would compare it to watching Bambi walk. She went with some cute wedges since they give her the height (oh the curse of the short Asian genes) but are still comfortable and she can actually walk in them. 

I spent most of the evening held up in the craft room making Christmas decorations for my apartment. They are so cute! I'll post pictures when they are finished. Now I'm just finishing a movie and then I'll be off to bed so I can get up bright and early for the trip back to Utah. To sum up, it was a great (albeit extremely short) break and trip home.

*Actually posted on March 11, 2015 but I used the date I wrote it. I think I just forgot to post it.*

Well I'm Going Home...

Back to the place where I belong. Are you singing that song now? Its the eve before the eve of Thanksgiving. Three hours and counting until I start the drive home with two friends. I'm so grateful that I have the opportunity to take a few extra days of (paid!) time off so I can go home. I don't get to go home very often and its always too short. While this is a short visit, I'll be on my way back in a few short weeks for Christmas. I'm excited for the road trip, it should be fun. And my siblings don't know that I'm coming so it will be a surprise. I can't wait to see everyone!

The one thing that I'm sad about is that I'll be away from best friend and roommate Amber, AKA Panda. We have so much fun together! She's like my sister out here in Utah while I'm away from my sisters back home. She's my Bosom Friend, for those who have seen Anne of Green Gables. Sometimes we read children's books with accents (Amber's not that great at it, but it's fun watching her try). We tell bedtime stories to each other, often made up stories about how we meet our future husbands while travelling abroad. They are are like a made for TV Hallmark or Lifetime movie. In other words, they're awesome. We laugh. A LOT. We both hate being apart and talk about how we are going to be neighbors when we're older and our kids are going to be best friends.

During the summer she went on a 2 week Europe tour and I made
her a little scavenger hunt list for each place. She liked it and took a
picture of some of them for me to see.

A closer look at the lists.

I've gone camping with her family.

Please enjoy some of our text conversations. I'm blue.

We love Pitch Perfect and using hash tags (#)  in texts.

We've started playing The Bacon Game. You replace one word in a movie title with the word bacon. Some of favorites are Legally Bacon, He's Just Not That Into Bacon, Girls Just Want to Have Bacon, The Sound of Bacon, The Secret Life of Bacon, etc. The list goes on...literally. We've been keeping track of the good ones. Try it out and see what you come up with. If its a good one, you should leave it as a comment.

Now she loves her purple hair.

That was just a glimpse into our relationship. One of these days Amber wants to come visit Oregon. That will be a fun trip. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. 

Anyway, maybe I should sleep a little before we leave, but I doubt it. I probably won't post again until after Thanksgiving, so to anyone actually reading this, I hope you have an enjoyable holiday with those you love and be safe to anyone traveling like I am.

My Life As of Late

Because I've let myself get behind yet again, I will keep it short by catching up in picture form.

This was my pumpkin for Halloween this year. Didn't actually carve it, but I like how it turned out. Maybe one day I'll see the real thing.

If you didn't already know, I've got a huge thing for polka dots. I got this sweater at Forever 21. I'm a huge fan of their sweaters. It's one of my favorite clothing items in my possession.

My friend Jensen and Porter are becoming close friends. 

Amber and I decided to have an all nighter one Friday night and both had our first Monster Energy drink to help us stay awake. I lasted until 5 AM , which is pretty impressive since I usually go to bed before midnight for work and my internal clock is set to make me tired around 10.

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream!! We made shakes and threw in some chocolate chips. We also added a few spoonfuls of eggnog  ice cream too. YUM!

I just had to put this here. It's too perfect. Love Emma Stone. Love Easy A.

Amber and I decided to chalk our hair on Saturday and I messed around some more on Sunday. It's a fun and non permanent way to add color to your hair. I really liked the look of the red in my hair.

Fast forward a few days...

I DYED MY HAIR!!!

I've always been against dying my hair until I go gray because I love my hair and it's to expensive to keep it up after you start. I'm too low maintenance for that and I'd rather spend my money elsewhere. After chalking my hair, I kept thinking about adding some color to my hair permanently. I only wanted to do the ends so I could cut it if I didn't like it without being bald and it  it was cheaper. I looked at pictures online and ws deciding between red and purple. Amber, my roommate, is a red head (and I somehow managed to convince her to do it too) and purple was one of the few colors that would work for her so I went for the obvious choice. I regret nothing. I was terrified to do it myself because like most girls, I'm pretty attached to my hair and I was sure I was going to manage to screw it up. When we were buying the dye, we had to admit to the employee at Sally's Beauty Supply that we were clueless. She told us what to use and then I went home and watched a few youtube videos and then went for it. Since my hair is dark, I had to bleach it first so the read would show better.

Then it was time to add the red. 

Took this at work the next day. Rockin' the red and the polka dots. 

i love it. I Love It. I LOVE IT. 

I got so many compliments and people were surprised I actually went through with it. I was surprised I went through with it. One worker even serenaded me with Alicia Keys' "Girl On Fire". It was great.

I think a lot of people have been getting the itch to do something different with their hair because Jensen wanted to shave his hair.

It's been said that the first cut is the deepest. In his case it was the hardest. Its the shortest his hair has been in a long time or maybe ever.

Finished. He doesn't look too pleased.

He likes it. I did pretty good if I do say so myself, although its not that hard to just shave a head. 

Lately I've been in a crafty mood. I made these using cheap canvas, scrapbook paper and thumbtacks. i put some cardboard in the back so the thumbtacks would stay better and not just be poking through. 

Live. Laugh. Love.
Not a fan of the way the L turned out on love but I didn't want to fix it.

I made this banner for Thanksgiving. I'm the process of making a different one, also for the upcoming holiday, but since I'm moving at a snail's pace it may have to make it's debut next year. Sad.

Isn't it pretty?

Well, I think that's about it. Of course other things have happened, but I don't have pictures documenting them and that's okay. I'm getting better at taking pictures because it is nice to have the memories captured, but it's also good to just live in the moment and not worry about collecting the moments on film (or in most cases these days on phones). Life is for living and that's what I'm doing.

Decisions

Hello, it's me again. I'm back! Today during sacrament meeting, I was thinking about a lot of different things. One of the thoughts I had was relating blogging to the atonement. Weird, I know. A couple people had talked about writing in their journals and it made me think about how much I missed blogging. With the atonement, we can repent and be forgiven of our sins. We're not perfect and we are going to make mistakes, but we have a way to start fresh and do better. I seem to keep starting and stopping with blogging. I've faltered countless times at being consistent, but I always come back to it. It doesn't matter how much time has passed between posts. It's never too late to use the atonement in our lives and it's never too late for me to start blogging again. Writing this blog has been therapeutic for me in the past and I feel its something I need now. As with any habit, it's going to take time and work to do this regularly again, but I'll get there.

Normally, I'm pretty bad about remembering about fast Sunday until the morning of so I never really plan out what I'm fasting for unless there is something important or significant on my mind. As many of my friends and family know, I have been planning to go teach English in China through ILP for a while now. I was pretty dead set on going in January. Lately I've started wondering if now is the time to go. There have just been little things popping up and making me rethink my decision. I still want to go, but just not now. One of the biggest factors is my new position at work. It was an unexpected opportunity/promotion that came up last month. I'm happier and making more money which I can use to go to China at a later date and still have money for when I come back instead of going now and coming back close to broke. I know money isn't everything and this isn't the only reason why I've considered postponing going. I decided to fast today to help me decide and I came to conclusion to wait. So, I'll most likely be going next fall.

Since it's been so long, I have more that I want to post, but I'll save it for tomorrow.