Campus was pretty much dead all day on Wednesday. Most people had already left to go home for their Thanksgiving vacation, but not me. I still had to work. But I am happy I worked because I have requested a lot of days off recently, and my bank account will soon start to suffer.
Rory and I ended up leaving to go home around 4:30. On a good day it really only takes an hour and a half to get home, some days it's a little closer to two hours. But with everyone driving up to the valley for thanksgiving, it was a nightmare. We didn't get to our house until 7:30. All you math whizzes are right, that's three hours. We were at a stand still on the I-10 for what felt like forever. And of course on top of all the cars driving on the road, there was an accident right before where I am supposed to exit, so everyone was taking their two seconds to look at what happened, backing up traffic even more. As much as I complain about that, I admittedly took my two seconds as well.
When we finally got home, we made snow cones with EJ's new snow cone maker that McKenzie got for him on his 26th birthday. Zach came over and we played Disney Scene It with everyone. My dad wasn't all too excited about playing, up until he answered the winning question, then he rubbed it in all of our faces.
Thursday November 26
As we do every year, the family and I went to Avondale to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents and cousins. The Price family are hard core ASU fans (with the exception of Brenden) and the Richardson family are, obviously, hard core UA fans. So every Thanksgiving each family comes decked out in their school's attire. Usually the rivalry game is on Thanksgiving weekend, so we can usually talk a little smack to each other and talk about who is going to get slaughtered. Unfortunately this year, the game was the week before Thanksgiving, and ASU won. But is it really a win, when we had our third string quarter back playing?
Last year my Uncle Chad made UA and ASU corn holes, so now we have the tradition of having a rivalry corn hole game. The first game is against the parents (Pat/Jay vs. Bedie/Chad), and then there's kids and whoever else wants to play. I only played one game (me/Rory vs. McKenzie/EJ), Rory and I ended up winning, but none of us are really that good at throwing bean bags into holes.
I am not a big fan of Thanksgiving food. Like it's good, but not my favorite. Except stuffing, I love stuffing. I also love all things pumpkin desserts and luckily we had pumpkin pie and a pumpkin cream cheese roll of deliciousness.
I failed at life and didn't really take any pictures, but I hope you can imagine it all anyway, it was a great Thanksgiving as usual.
After the festivities at the Price household, we went back to Mesa and prepared to go Black Friday shopping. The Black Friday crew this year consisted of: Mom, EJ, me, Zach and McKenzie.
Our first stop (and the most successful stop) was Target. We lined up an hour and a half before the store opened. When the doors opened we ran to get everything we needed, and got it successfully. We then split up and roamed around the store to see if there was anything we wanted, along the way we found Trevor! Poor guy worked Thursday and Friday during the craziness.
After Target we had a lot of time to spare. The next place we actually wanted to go to was Scottsdale mall and the Urban Outfitters out there, which we assumed would both open at midnight. We got out of Target at like 7, so that was a lot of time to spare. We went to Wal Mart, Best Buy, Ulta, Kohls. I didn't buy anything besides a jacket, but I love the jacket and it was quite cheap at Kohls. I also ended up buying my secret sibling at Kohls, so that was nice to get done early.
Eventually it was 10 PM and we just decided to go to Scottsdale mall and chill in Macy's which had opened a little earlier. So we spent almost two hours in Macy's dying or boredom and getting very tired. Midnight rolls around and tons of people are standing by the entrance into the mall.... Five minutes later a worker comes around and says that the mall doesn't open until 8. Needless to say we were all very upset that we didn't check the times prior and had to spend so much time in Macy's. So we walked over to the Urban Outfitters and my mom didn't find what she wanted so Scottsdale was a bust.
Even though we were all tired we decided to go to Chandler mall because in years past that mall opened at midnight and we figured it would be the same. WRONG. We get there close to 1 AM and almost everything is closed?!?! Turns out they changed their times to 6PM - Midnight.... SO we completely missed it. We failed at the night time of Black Friday for sure. But I was able to check Chandler off my list of cities. After that fail we went back home to get some sleep.
Friday November 27
My mom invited me to go with her, EJ and McKenzie to redeem themselves at 6 AM... I was a little too exhausted, so I didn't go. But I did end up going shopping around noon with Zach... but didn't get anything. I was honestly really holding out for cyber monday rather than black Friday.
Friday afternoon/night I went with my parents and Avery to Kyle Garr's wedding. He was one of my best friends back in the Eastridge days, and it's funny because he married a girl who I was best friends with in like 4th grade.... who woulda thunk it. The wedding was at Val Vista Lakes, the ceremony was outdoors, there was a hot chocolate break in between the ceremony and the reception so the party could take their pictures, then there was the reception, which was awesome. I ended up leaving right before the dance started, which I was kind of bummed about, but I must do what my ride tells me to.
I think my favorite part of the wedding was that it was pretty much an Eastridge reunion. Lots of families who had moved out of that ward came to celebrate with Kyle, so it was fun to see everyone and catch up.
Saturday November 28
I went with Zach and his family in the morning to the Mesa temple to do baptisms. It was a great experience, even though things got a little complicated with the mixture of family names and temple names.
After the baptisms, we took some pictures and I tweeted one of them with the caption "#eloped" hoping people would freak out. No one really responded besides Maddy with a "lolololol" and Steph with a "you guys would". But I did get a lot my favorites than I usually do on twitter... so I wonder if people really did believe me and it's now spreading everywhere.
Later I hung out with Sadie for some fun party time. We got some Krazy Sub (did they get new bread? I am convinced they did), bought some Jones, went to a park, you know just the usual Sadie and Sydney time. Then we decided we wanted to prank Trevor. He hates plums, so we were going to put a ton of plums in his front yard. Unfortunately, plums are out of season, so we decided to go with purple things instead. We got a purple flower, purple cabbage and a purple onion. I know you are thinking, that's not really a prank. But here is when the prank comes in. We wrote a note along these lines "Dear Trevor, Sadie told me that you really like plums, so I thought I would buy you some. Unfortunately they are out of season, so I hope this purple cabbage, onion and flower will do. Love, your secret admirer. PS I am in you singles ward" He had just moved his records to the single's ward in Mesa so we thought it would be fitting. He thought for a second that it was us, but we played it well and made him believe that we just helped this girl do this for him, and he believed us for awhile. Then Sadie showed him the video we recorded on our hidden camera, and it was just hilarious.
The next event of the night was going to the temple lights with Sadie, Trevor and Zach. We bought some hot chocolate at starbucks to keep us warm, but most of us finished before we even got to the temple, so that didn't help much with the temperature, but it was delicious. The lights are the same old same old, I love the hundreds of nativities that are in the vistor's center, there were some fancy QR codes at each of the "exhibits" so that's fancy. Funny story, you know the Living Christ statue that is in the visitor's center? Well the curtains were open so I was going to go and sit down to take a picture or two but as soon as I started walking up the missionaries closed the curtains on me #rejected. Maybe it wasn't that funny, but in the moment it was because I ran away.
After the temple lights we went to the Walton household and played Singstar with Zach's parents, his aunt and uncle and his grandma. I performed Material Girl with Sadie and It's Tricky with Zach and I sang and danced along for the rest of them. Zach's parents always told me that Zach is the master at Singstar, but he never wants to play with me. Even though he did put up a little fight on Saturday, he did finally play, and schooled everyone. In my defense though, the rapping songs are much more difficult to do well on than the regular ones.
Sunday November 29
I went to Indigo Bay with EJ because he was saying the closing prayer and Sadie was giving the Sunday School lesson.
Relief Society and Elder's Quorum were combined and we learned a lovely lesson about pornography, modesty and chastity. During the lesson I was thinking about how familiar the whole thing sounded to me, especially during the chastity part. Then I remember this talk I read on facebook given to YSA girls by their Bishop and the lesson was literally word for word from that original talk (well at least the chastity part). I have some interesting opinions about the talk itself, but I won't dive into that, I just thought it was funny that the Bishopric was giving this lesson as if they had come up with it, when it was really from a different talk. But anyway, Sadie gave an awesome lesson about Eternal Marriage in her Sunday School class, she's a great teacher, which explains why she was such a rockstar missionary.
After church Zach came over and we watched some Parks & Rec, some Survivor and then he left, I ate some dinner, and then left with Rory to go back to Tucson.
Once again I chose the worst time to drive on Thanksgiving weekend. Insane traffic once again, so I decided to actually stop in Casa Grande to make a video for my cities (I seriously pass by Casa Grande weekly and never feel like stopping to check it off my list). It was a good thing we stopped too because there was apparently a pretty big accident that happened around the same time a little further up on the I-10. Once again the traffic was backed up terribly, but the worst part is that the accident was cleared up so I didn't even get to put in my 2 seconds of looking at what happened.
I did eventually make it back to Tucson, unpacked my things and braced myself for the weeks I had ahead of me.
Monday November 30
Cyber Monday super fun. I bought a gorilla pod for my iPhone and an LED light for my camera. Living large.
I also had work all day, doing the usual. Nothing too exciting. I probably should have started the plethora amount of homework that I have to do for all my final assignments.
Let's just list them out:
Multimedia: Final documentary on a community issue (Due December 2)
Advanced Reporting: Final article (Due December 8)
Ethics: Research Paper - 2,000 word minimum (Due December 8)
Politics of the Developing World: TEDtalk analysis, and final exam
Government: Short answer and long essay final exam on December 14
Listing it out doesn't seem like too much, but in my head it's a lot and I think I am about to explode. Luckily the multimedia piece I will be done with today.... even though it's actually quite terrible. But i need to just barely do well enough to get an A.
Tuesday December 1
Happy December! It's really cold outside, especially when it's not your month for the car and you have to walk to/from school everyday.
Tuesday was just school all day long and reminded me of how stressed I am about all my finals.
Wednesday December 2
Update: Still stressed.
Yet another uneventful work day, but my students brighten my days when I am stressed out.
OH AND MY CYBER MONDAY DEALS SHOULD BE COMING TODAY WOOHOOO!
If I don't make it through these next two weeks, I want my funeral to be a dance party on my grave.
Sydney!!!!! I know you'll make it through these next two weeks no problemo!!!!! Best of luck :)
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