Golf-Cart Rides and Sheet Metal Shops: Exactly What I'm Forever Thankful For

As you get older, sometimes you have to spend holidays away from your family. Maybe you're just too far away to come home. Maybe you're obligated to spend the holidays with your significant other's family. There are so many reasons people can't make it home for the holidays, and this year I'm so thankful that I've made it home to my family every year since I've been in college. I can't imagine a holiday without them. 

In the times I have visited other people's family gatherings, it always shocks me that it's mostly just imediate family hanging around the house. In our family, I can always expect any given cousin (from 2nd to 4th and anywhere in between) from either side to just show up, and I love it although that's usually more frequent at Christmas time. Either way, you can always expect lots of laughs, little ones, enough food to feed two armies and a cup of coffee or a Diet Coke ready and waiting whenever you need it. 

Yesterday I sat in my Nana and Pops' kitchen looking at a cookbook/scrapbook that my cousin Laura made for my Pops' and my great uncles when my great-grandma "Honey" passed away in 2005. I couldn't help but get teary as I read. Pictures of everyone crammed into her tiny kitchen, all gathered around the table filled my blurry view. I was just a little kid back when they were taken...happy to eat whatever she cooked and sad to see that Uncle Mark had commandeered the TV to watch Sunday football once again. I was Honey's first great-grandchild. I was always with Honey; as far back as I can remember there were trips to McDonald's, the Dollar store and crisp sticks of spearmint gum. Making cut-out cookies, rhubarb crunch, banana nut bread and any sort of crazy cooking experiment she was patient enough to let me try brought us together. Try as I might, I just can't quite recreate her recipes. I guess it just comes with time, but I'm so thankful for my time with her. Even though I was very young, I cherished my time with her and I miss her and think of her every day, especially around the holidays. Her place at the dinner table usually has a little one in it, but she would've wanted it that way. And even though she's not here to celebrate our large, boisterous family with us, I know for a fact that she is in everyone's heart. It was Honey who insisted on being together - even if we had to pile into each other's laps to all fit around the table (now we can barely fit in one house)! It's hard to put into words everything that she meant to our family, but I know we all think of her when we hold a hot cup of coffee with sugar, or bite into a stick of spearmint gum...and most definitely when we sit around the dinner table, try to recreate her flawless recipes, and reminisce over old family stories that will just never get old. When I think of family, these are the things I think of.

So this year if you ask me what I'm thankful for, this is what I'll tell you in the most cliche-way possible: family. I'm thankful for my family, every single part of it. I'm thankful for the good times and the bad. I'm thankful for our successes and our failures. I'm thankful for golf-cart rides and sheet-metal shops and walnut-tree-climbing and snowman building and cooking in a tiny kitchen and davenports and chocolate cake drenched in milk. I'm thankful for faith through pain, for being tough and strong when things get hard but not being afraid to cry when things just seem too hard because we've all been there. I'm thankful for the faith and hope and love that my family effortlessly passed down to me. I'm thankful for the memories I've made with my family in the past, and I'm thankful for the memories I'll make with my family in the future. My family had molded me into the person I've become and I couldn't be more grateful for them. They might be just a little loud, and they might have some of the hottest tempers I've ever encountered (myself included), but they've got the biggest hearts around. I'm thankful for my family, each and every one of them, and I always, always will be.

I wish I could find a picture of everyone together....but there are definitely too many of us to all fit in one frame ;)

5 of the Weirdest Things You'll Encounter at the Aiport

Most of you that know me know that I have to travel pretty far to get to my northern homeland (Ohio). Sometimes if I have a travel partner, I'll drive the 10 hours to get home. But, usually I end up flying. Let me preface this by saying: if you've never flown out of a major aiport before, you should do it just for the experience. It's truly life changing. Now, some people have had even crazier experiences at the airport than I have and I would love to hear about them. For now, I'll go through some of the craziest things I've encountered at the aiport.

1.) A (very very serious about his practice) yogi. He was seriously sitting on a bench outside of baggage claim. As someone who really enjoys practing yoga, I can't help but think that doing yoga in a hectic airport is super inefficient. Anyways, it's not my place to criticize his yoga practice, but it was crazy to see him sitting on that bench meditating.

2.) A bunch of wiener dogs! Really it was only two, but when you're at the aiport and not prepared to see wiener dogs, it seems pretty crazy.

3.) Recently, I saw a woman who broke all the rules of fashion. ALL THE RULES. She was wearing a gray-on-gray Victoria's Secret Pink Brand Sweat Suit. But, it was like 3 sizes too small. She also had some really "nice" bleach blonde hair and extensions that totally blended in with her real hair. Add to that some super natural false eyelashes and a spray tan that matched her skin tone perfectly. Need I say more?

4.) When I go to the airport, headphones become a necessity. Usually I read a book or magazine and I'm perfectly happy in my own little world. Well, this summer as I was reading and listening to music, this 17 year old guy came up and sat right next to me! If you're at all familiar with the unwritten rules of airport etiquitte, you know that sitting in the seat directly next to someone you don't know is a no-go. It's usually safe to sit at least one seat away. Well this guy sat next to me, and asked what I was reading and listening to music (mind you, another unwritten rule is that if someone is wearing headphones, they do not wish to be spoken to). THEN he had the nerve to ask my name! I told him, and I asked him what his name was too (just to be polite) and do you know what he said? He said "It's on a need to know basis." REALLY. So anyways, 17 year old boys at the airport are weird. Also, he asked to borrow my cell phone. No.

5.) People that talk on their bluetooth earpiecs. They sorta look like robot-people talking to themselves. It's okay, though. I'm pretty sure I was that weird person yesterday actually. I was using my headphones to talk to my mom on the phone. The ladies sitting next to me were looking at me like they thought I was talking to them, and they were sort of staring at me because it definitely looked like I was talking to myself, just like the robot people. Honestly though, I kind of thought it was funny because they looked silly staring at me. I was that weird person at the airport and it was awesome.

So, with that being said, you'll see weird people wherever you go. Sometime's you'll even be the weird person. But mostly at the airport. Next time you run into those people, give them a silent "rock-on" for doing their weird thang.

Charlie Plumb and One Direction

"When the world is crumbling around you, you have to believe there's a jewel in the rubble. Now, the second part is, you have to get off your biscuits and go find it! You have to go further outside yourself!" - Charlie Plumb

I've once again gotten behind on my blog posts (sad face). I'm trying my best, but sometimes I really have difficulty finding inspiration, and I'm pretty sure if I just wrote about my daily existence no one would read for real, because really, I don't do that many interesting things every single day. Although I have actually found a One Direction song that I quite enjoy and that's pretty strange and interesting for me to even admit.

So here's the actual point of this post. I started this out with a quote from a man named Charlie Plumb. I didn't know who Charlie Plumb was until I was required to watch one of his speeches for my online speech class. It was late, around 11:06pm when I started watching. Much to my dismay, the speech was 55 minutes long. Ugh. I just wanted to go to sleep. And by go to sleep I mean lay in bed and get on Pinterest until I couldn't keep my eyes open one more second. But once again I was having difficulties with the internet, so I was forced to watch this speech on one of the pretty desktop Macs in the FOCUS Center (it's a tutoring center for the freshies, but I tend to get in there and do homework when my room is too messy to encourage adequate concentration efforts). I plugged in some headphones, and settled in for the long haul.

An old man appeared on the screen, He introduced himself as Mr. Charlie Plumb, and he had been a top gun pilot and prisoner of war during Vietnam. Suddenly, I was intrigued. I listened to him speak with that old-timey tone and those vintage catchphrases. It sort of reminded me of listening to my Great-Grandpa Bowen preach in church, except for Mr. Plumb had studied professional speaking and Grandpa Bowen has not. On to the point, though. Mr. Charlie Plumb was a prisoner of war for 6 years, and he was expected to basically be a basket case when he finally returned to the States. But, much to everyone's surprise, he was not in fact crazy - even when he found out that his wife had hung on for 5 years, waiting for him, but had filed for divorce 3 months before his return. He was still okay. In fact, he was inspired. He was encouraged. He was strong. Why? How could something so terrible happen to one man, yet he rises above the negativity in order to inspire others? What's the answer?

The answer is that Mr. Plumb used this negative experience to "pack his parachute." This is the analogy he uses throughout his presentation. The whole point of the analogy is that sometimes negative, horrible, terrible, heart-breaking things happen in life. But, all of the past experiences you've had, all of the people who have taught you something valuable throughout life have packed your parachute to ensure your survival of these difficult things. All of the joys and pains, losses and gains, and difficult lessons to learn that you've experienced are the things that you can look back on and use when something even harder comes up. And then that becomes an experience in itself. So if you go back to the top of this page, and read the quote I began with, you'll see my point. You absolutely have to believe that you can find something good in the bad.

Anyways, I'm not a motivational speaker. Maybe with some further cultivation and one solid idea (this is hard for me. I have lots and lots of kind of almost solid ideas. I just need to pick one...) I could be a professional speaker. But I'm pretty sure that's not my calling. Charlie Plumb gives his speech a lot better than I can sum it up, so if you've got some time and if you're feeling like everything's going wrong, watch this old man tell you what's what here. Then after you watch, think about the experiences, people and places that have helped to pack your parachute, and thank God, thank those people, for those lessons. Even the hard ones.

8 Terrible Fall Trends (with pictures!)

I am currently at a loss for what to blog about. I'll start by catching you up on the most recent happenings in my life. The weekend of Halloween I was living the RA life and being on duty. It was a most eventful weekend, and I am sworn to the utmost of secrecy about most of the things that happened. Let's just say, there were several incident reports filed! Yay!

The following week, I rode the struggle bus everywhere I went. Mostly this is because it was the week of my birthday and I had 500 things to do that I actually did not want to do. But, it was all worth it on Friday, November 7th; the glorious day of my birth. I turned 21 this year, and I must say that it was one of the best birthdays I've had in my life thus far. I'll leave it at that. As today is Monday, I don't have much to say about this week so far, other than I have noticed some very horrible, horrendous trends this fall. I have consulted some of my colleagues about their thoughts on this topic and these are some of the collectively worse things we have all seen within the past 2 months.

1.) EXTRA EXTRA long t-shirts. As in, when a girl wears a t-shirt down to her knees and it kind of looks like a night gown.

2.) I read this second "worst fashion trend" from allure.com. **DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS "WORST TREND"** Sockbuns. According to allure, "They're big, they're bulbous, and no one really knows what's inside them: They're the UFOs of hairstyling!" Maybe it's because I'm wearing a sockbun as I write this, but I really think they're the best thing to ever happen to womankind. I mean, come on, what is better than not having to wash your hair or try hard to make it look nice, and it still looking nice in the end anyways? Sockbuns rule. allure.com is wrong. Bye.

<3 love <3

3.) The return of 90s grunge. Not cute, 90s style. I'm talking about 90s grunge, grunge, grunge. Just think about the word grunge, in itself. I mean, it's gross, and so is the excessive use of grunge style this fall. Just stop it plz.

yikes.

4.) Black lipstick. Black lipstick makes me think of dogs. As in, when I was like 5 years old and obssessed with animals (Animal Planet was my jam), I would pretend to be a little puppy dog. Once when I did this, my cousin Stacy told me that I couldn't be a dog because dogs have black lips and I didn't have black lips because I was a little human girl. Is it weird that I remember this? Probably, but every time I see a girl wearing black lipstick I think of a dog.

5.) White tube socks and Nike free runs as every day attire. I would only wear this if I was going directly to the gym to play a game of pick-up basketball or something like that. Even when I was 8 years old I didn't want to wear socks that came above my ankles because I thought that was nerdy. However, on an 8 year old little girl, socks above the ankle with some sparkly lil tennies is really stinking cute. On a 19 year old? Not so much. I don't get it, but maybe I'm just behind on the times.

8-year-old me: *folds down lace to below heels*

6.) Ew. This terrible trend comes from elle.com Wearing a dress over pants. This is something I wanted to do when I was 11 years old. This is not something I would do 10 years later, or ever for that matter. If you need to wear something under your dress, wear leggings or cute little tights or nude hose. Those are classic fixes for cold legs in the winter time! Not pants. Just no.

*cringes*

I know it can be difficult, but if you wear hose, you too can be a princess! But just look at Mia Thermopolis, she ended up rocking those hose! 

7.) Speaking of leggings, wearing leggings as pants but not wearing a shirt that keeps all of your everything from being revealed is another Terrible Trend. I'm not saying that I would never wear leggings as pants. I've done it before and I'll do it again. Also, this might seem to contradict Terrible Trend #1 (too-long t-shirts). The point is to cover things that should be covered (i.e., booty) and to find that perfect balance between covering up and wearing a nightgown and longjohns.

8.) Here I present to you the worst of them all: wearing tights underneath shorts. This is so weird. Like, I know you want to "be like the cool kids," but really. This is weird. Why don't you just wear...hmm...pants?!?!?! Why, someone please enlighten me, would you even desire to wear tights when you don't have to? (This may also seem to contradict the argument against Terrible Trend #6; to be clear, tights/hose/leggings should be worn with dresses or skirts. Tights are very uncomfortable no matter how old you get, so you should only wear them when necessary. As in, only wear them when you're wearing a dress and you absolutely must.)

brb, crying.

In conclusion, there are probably lots of other terrible things that people wear but to be honest, I just can't think of any more right now and the ones I've got are pretty bad. I would love to hear about some of the worst things you've seen this fall, partially because some of it is hilarious and some of it is just plain fascinating.

P.S. - My sincerest apologies if I have offended your unique, personal style. I probably couldn't pull it off anyways.

Thanks for reading!