MUST BUY ALL THE THINGS!!!! GRRRR...

So with all this hullabaloo going on about Black Friday extending into Thursday this year to allow for more shopping madness, it kind of makes me angry. What is wrong with America? Maybe stuff like this happens in other countries too, but I live here so I'm complaining about here. America you are ridiculous. I love you, but sometimes I don't like you. Wasn't the first Thanksgiving about sitting down to eat and celebrate the successful harvest by not working or doing anything crazy?

Thanksgiving happens to be one of my favorite holidays. Maybe it's the food that makes me love it, or maybe it's the fact that my mom and I can be found pulling out 500 piece puzzles and attempting to do one of them throughout an entire day. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know what it isn't. And it isn't BLACK FRIDAY.

Black Friday is a grotesque display of how awful Americans can be. I love America, but I don't like certain things that are becoming the norm.

BLACK FRIDAY IS DUMB.

I mean that, and yes I wrote it like I was yelling. I want to stand in the middle of the mall like a crazy protester with signs and say, "GO HOME AND STOP BEING SO DUMB."

I know that Black Friday is a great day to get great deals. But why do you need to go through all that drama to get all that crap? Whatever happened to making memories with your family that don't involve shopping malls during the holiday season? I mean do people even know what the holiday season is about anymore? Or is the holiday season now just about shopping for new crap? New plastic pieces of technology to fill our brains with nonsense and kill our ability to concentrate, new clothes that look great, but only until fashion designers say in 3 months it is out of style, new crap that will sit on shelves in your home and turn you into a hoarder?

Don't get me wrong, I love technology. It's an amazing invention. I love giving and receiving gifts. I love buying new things that I need and want. But I refuse to stand in a huge line like a ravenous wolf after my prey when I buy things. I HATE STORES FROM NOVEMBER TO JANUARY. It's like normal humans turn into salivating dogs at the ring of Pavlov's bell when the fourth Friday in November rolls around. Wasn't it just last year or the year before that a woman started pepper-spraying the crowd around her to keep them away from what she wanted to buy? WHO EVEN DOES THAT?

I seriously can't stand it. STOP BUYING THINGS YOU CRAZY WOLVES! If you can't be nice, and mentally stable during November and December, you're not allowed outside of your home.

Acting out the Christmas Story from the Bible.

I miss being oblivious to Black Friday. I was young enough that I didn't know that stuff was going on. I just knew that Christmas time was magic. Christmas lights were everywhere, the tree decorated in our home, we always had a fire going in our fireplace because it's cold out, and the air gets crisp and cold. My church youth group would deliver gifts to and visit with the elderly of our neighborhoods. Every time I would come home from school my mom would have a spice candle burning, and christmas music on the stereo. She would make chocolate mint treats, and we would prepare for the most magical night of the year. A night that would never allow me to sleep, because my stomach would be too full of butterflies to be able to sleep.

Usually that night of angst was preceded by a fancy candlelit dinner. This is my favorite Christmas tradition. Every Christmas Eve my mom cooks a nice ham or something fancy and we eat by candelight. Usually the candles would get blown out half way through and the lights would be back on... having 5 brothers makes for some little pyro-maniacs at the table messing with the fire. It was fun while it lasted though! Then we'd all read the Christmas story from the Bible and get ready for bed. This is still the best memory for me of Christmas. It's still magical to me because I crave family time during the holiday season.

I am so excited for this weekend. I can't wait for the feast, the family, and the Friday off work (but it won't involve anything black). I am also very excited for Christmas this year! It is my first Christmas living with Justin and our 3rd since we got together. Sure we kind of have no surprises this year for Christmas, but that's because we both needed some things so we just bought them for each other. But who cares, I don't love Christmas for the gifts. I love it for the magic-ness that it brings. I can't wait for us to start our own traditions and have many more holiday seasons to come. We already set up our tree and it's cute! It's small, and sparsely decorated, but every ornament is from a place we've been or something we've done. It's a sentimental tree that will get more additions to it as our lives progress.

What about you? What are your favorite holiday season traditions, memories, or crazy stories?

So it's time for my regular Saturday post! I know, I should post more during the week. It's not like I don't have the time. But my mind seems to be at it's best on Saturday mornings, when my eyes pop open around the time I usually start work every weekday. Justin never gets this (he's a night owl), and I used to fight against it, but I have to say, I do my best work in the mornings the older I get. I just can't seem to sleep in without my muscles starting to ache from laying in bed for too long. I think this comes from having a desk job. I had them all through college but I also danced for a good 3 hours at least 3 times a week. (College dance parties: keeping busy students healthy since 1955).

I remember waking up between 12 and 2 pm the whole summer after high school. I was a night owl for the next 5 years, with a regular bedtime of anywhere between 2am-7am... then suddenly my clock started shifting and I became a regular adult. You know, in the world where regular adult = 8 hours of sleep or I become a walking, emotional, grizzly bear. The kind that says things like, "I'm hungry let's go eat," only to thwart every restaurant suggestion/food idea Justin has, which just confuses him and makes him try to dodge the grizzly bear that was currently me (this happened yesterday). Good thing he's as tough as the craziest grizzly bear days I have, or the guy would be running for the hills. Luckily I like to sleep at night so this doesn't happen all the time.

Aaaanyway...

This is a great photo showing the nerdiest couple ever buying bananas. It also is true. If you get married, you smile the whole time you're buying bananas because you're like, "What up! I'm buying bananas with my spouse, while you're buying bananas alone!" (Disclaimer: this actually doesn't happen as grossly and cheesy as this photo.)

My post today is on how normal life is just cool. I'll tell you why. I spend a bit of time every so often talking to my single friends that need relationship advice. Sometimes I just can't help but laugh partly because I'm graduated to the married world, and other times it's because maybe I can finally see all the crap I was going through as a single in this area and I can totally relate and for some reason that is funny. My friends just vent about how a guy said this, but then had no follow through, or once again something didn't work out and they are starting all over. Before I start a rant about how weird being single in Utah can be, let me go off on a better tangent.

I just want to say how thankful I am and how wonderful it is to be married to Justin and just living a normal life. We have a nice apartment, and good jobs, and we spend the bulk of our days at work, and come home to each other and just hang out or he does homework. We do simple things like watch an episode of our new addiction Breaking Bad, or go grocery shopping, or I do yoga while he knocks out more homework assignments. I see my friends' Facebook posting about "fun" activities they do as singles, and I am just grateful. I'm grateful that I no longer have to try on 5 outfits before I go out, so as to look my most attractive, then make sure I am as subtly-but-perfectly-funny as I can be or as interesting/cool as possible so as to attract a potential mate. And then don't even get me started on how awesome it is to not have to go on first dates... blegh. If dates were beans, first dates would be the lima beans of the group... nobody likes lima beans. I'm still not even sure they're edible. So I guess it makes sense that our first date was more of a meet-up, not a date, since I prefer to avoid lima beans.

Last night we got home from work, caught the movie Argo at the local theater, and then hit up the local Walmart for a few things we needed.

Side note: I recommend this movie, it's got good suspense, and is based on a true de-classified story from the CIA. Who doesn't love a story that used to be classified, but is now de-classified? Also, I chose it and finally redeemed myself from the bad string of movie choices I had earlier this year, which led Justin to saying "You don't get to pick movies anymore", and now he takes that back. 

They look like this, but were a little tiny bit cheaper and a knockoff, but they are weird, and awesome. Ok, not  even weird, just awesome.

I'm not going to lie, it was an excellent Friday night. Maybe it's because I have a partner in crime to do everything, so buying lightbulbs and water bottles becomes more fun to me than it was before. But also it's because I don't have to try anymore, I can "be". I have my best friend there with me at all times. All I have to do is be myself in all my self's glory. He encourages me to do things a little more boldly than I used to because he knows whatever I do will be awesome and will make me happy, and he also knows that I hold myself back a lot. Dumb little encouragements, like buy that friggin pair of moccasin booties you've been eyeing for weeks even though you're not sure they go with your clothes. Turns out they do. It also turns out, not trying to look perfect is what makes for better outfits, and more fun in life. Who knew getting married to Justin could teach me little things like this? I was slowly learning it, but he teaches me faster.


Also, he earns extreme bonus points for de-webbing our place and spraying a few weeks ago. Now that it's getting cold we have very few bugs, but he's going to do it again because he knows life without spiders equals the best life and some of those little buggers are already making new webs on our exterior doors. The little jerks.  Last night we were relaxing on the couch watching an episode of our addiction before bed, and he said "Those are cool shoes, let me look at them!". I was wearing my new moccasins, and he took one off and then promptly slams the bottom of it into the wall, not before I caught a glimpse of a black crawly thing that was his direct target. Such a tactically sound move. He's so great, he knows that it's better to kill the spider and tell me it's gone, than to show it to me first.

So this, my friends, is why normal life is just cool. I can't wait for more normal cool things to happen to us. Like maybe tonight we'll buy some produce and listen to the radio. Life is good.

Also... please enjoy this fun song by Grouplove, called Tongue Tied. The video is a little bit in the way of hipster style videos, so it might seem a little weird but the song is definitely great!