Giving Thanks, a little shopping, and a whole lot of waiting!

First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! This was the first year I was not with my own family for Thanksgiving, which was very strange to me. My Thanksgivings always consisted of making pies with my mom and taking them to my aunts house and then helping set the table and thinking of fun ways to make the napkins look nice. Since I was not with my family, I didn't do those traditional things. But, I did join a wonderful family and had just as much fun with them. Ally and I went to Tina's house on Wednesday afternoon and when we go there, there was all sorts of materials to make gingerbread houses. Gumdrops, spice drops, peppermint candy canes, peppermint circles, pretzels in all shapes and sizes, frosting galore, sprinkles in different colors, powered sugar for snow, graham crackers, pasta noodles, and everything else in between! Ally and I with Tina's kids, Parker, Graham, and Layla, made gingerbread houses throughout the two days we stayed at their house. Some of the gingerbread houses got pretty extravagant! There were oil rigs, cars made out of Nerds, tricycles, ice skating rinks, chimneys, palm trees, boats, and even people! My gingerbread house wasn't as fancy as the kids, they had a year of practice on me. Last year they made a complete city! I went with a peppermint theme and made a slide going off the noodle roof to a pool with a watch walrus and a water spider watching outside the pool. I unfortunately posted pictures on Snapchat but did not save them on my IPod, but be reassured, that it was pretty great! I'm glad I could have the kids' help with it! Tina also has many animals, they have a dog named Joe who was my best friend over the weekend, 2 cockatiels named Pandora and Zeus, cat named Chewy, a lizard and 2 fish. Tina was brave to host Ally and I, she was wonderful about everything. Also on Wednesday, we started prepping some of the food for Thursday. I helped Meemaw Fran with cutting bread for homemade stuffing but I spent most of my time with the kids watching National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. On Thursday, Ally and I woke up to all the kids eating breakfast in the kitchen and Tina prepared both of us breakfast as well, we had pumpkin pancakes and eggs. We made some changes and touches on a gingerbread houses since the foundation (crackers and icing) was hardened and could do some decorating. We prepared most of the food and then ate a Thanksgiving dinner/lunch in the afternoon. We had turkey, ham, roasted vegetables, green bean casserole, potatoes, gravy, bread stuffing from the turkey, non-turkey stuffing, brie and crackers, pumpkin pie, snicker doodles, Oreo desserts, and then snacks in between. It was so nice to be with the family, it was a very relaxed Thanksgiving, they are not fancy about it, nor is my family. Parker had it on his holiday bucket list to go Black Friday shopping for 8 people and to get himself a pair of shoes. We went to Target on Thursday night at 6pm and that was the busiest store we went to all weekend. It was very organized chaos. We got a lot of shopping done, I bought a cardigan that was on sale and then a little girl that is close to me a doll. We were done shopping and back at Tina's by 7:30pm. One of the things I planned with the kids was to do Black Friday Bingo. I spent time and made a bingo sheet with different things you could see on Black Friday since the kids have never done it before. We played it on Friday and Graham got a bingo! Some of the things on the card were: crazy hair, crying children, long lines, security shows up, credit card machine down, someone wearing slippers, someone wearing pajamas, miserable boyfriend/husband and more. We all went to the Harrisburg mall, which I was expecting to be completely packed and crazy, but it was the complete opposite, there were less people there on Black Friday than any other day at the mall. We did not go super early in the morning, we left the house at 8am. Some of the stores we went to at the mall were Bass Pro Shop, Bath and Body Works, Macy's, Claire's, Sears, and Best Buy. Parker got his shoes and a few people off his list! Graham was very skeptical on going shopping with us because Ally and I are two girls he doesn't know very well and going shopping, When he found out I made a bingo card, he was much more excited to do it! And he won at bingo, lucky duck.


Small Christmas tree and stockings

After shopping, we went back to Tina's had left overs from Thanksgiving and then played a couple games with Layla and watched Family Feud. When I returned back home at the Sycamore House on Friday, I dug a Christmas tree out from the basement and found some decorations in the 3rd floor crawlspace. The angel on the tree is very old and very creepy. The lights blink and she has dark eyes with lights next to her face, so whenever she lights up you see dark eyes with the pupil. Pretty creepy, but its an angel. I found stockings in the crawlspace and put those on the mantel. I love decorating for Christmas and my mom does too. She told me she has put up quite a few decorations at home as well.


Broken Window

On Saturday, Ally and I went to go to one of our housemates car, which she left for us to go grocery shopping, to come to find it with its rear window completely smashed in. That was my first experience with not knowing what to do and a little bit a fear because we weren't sure what happened, we were parked on church property. We called the police and they said that they would send someone over, 3 hours later, Ally got a phone call saying that they weren't going to come, but they would file an incident report so Shannon could claim something with her insurance company. We did some investigation of the car, and found out someone threw a garbage bag and it crushed through the window. Someone dug through the garbage bag and learned that there was piece of mail in it with a name and someone from the church is going to be calling the landlord of the apartment where it was thrown from (we believe). 
I got a lot done with my graduate school application, I have applied to the graduate school and almost have my personal statement and my application to the program completed. I hope to turn that in in the next couple of days. This coming week at work will be very busy- tomorrow coffee orders are due and I will be entering data into a spreadsheet I created like a mad woman to put the order in later in the afternoon. I am very pleased and excited about this coffee fundraiser, I am hoping we will earn over $1,000.
I am also getting pretty antsy to go home. Tomorrow is officially December, which means I will be home in 17 days. I started a countdown when it was 130 days away, it is starting to become real that I am going home and spending Christmas with my family. I have been working on a few paintings and projects for Christmas presents, I am very excited to give them to people and spend time with my Iowa and Minnesota friends and family!