happy thanksgiving!

Thank goodness for four days off! This Thanksgiving break has saved my sanity and, even though I haven't been as productive as I would have hoped I feel like now that I have gotten some rest I can power through these next three weeks of school (2 weeks of class and 1 week of finals). I don't think I have ever looked forward to semesters ending so much!

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures on Thanksgiving but we did have a good day! Mikel and I were invited over to Mike's house (a guy Mikel works with) for dinner with his family. The boys played a lot of pool, we watched some football, ate lots of food and plenty of dessert!

Black Friday proved to be as crazy as promised and Mikel worked about 11 hours that day. The positive is that he did a ton of sales so that means more money! He is working a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas but it will be worth it!

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is probably putting up all the Christmas decorations afterward. We bought a narrow, pre-lit tree last year for Christmas. It would be awesome to have a big, real tree but we don't have room or money for that so maybe later!

Here is our tree all decorated. They are not the best pictures but you get the idea. One of these days I'll spend lots of time learning how to edit photos so they look all fancy but this will have to do for now!

These are some of the ornaments on our tree...

As always around the holidays, we wish we could be closer and spend it with family but we are having fun creating our own celebrations and traditions!

On a positive note, we haven't seen snow yet. Well, Mikel said it was kind of snowing at 3 in the morning when he went to Sears but that doesn't count because there was nothing on the ground and I was awake to see it!

How can it be November 22 already!?

I can't believe I haven't updated in so long but things have been happening on super speed recently! I can't wait for Thanksgiving to be here and have a couple days off. I wish we had the whole week like in Idaho but of course we're not that lucky!

With the school semester close to being over there is sooo much to do! Papers to write, tests to grade and studying to do, students who want to meet and talk about their grade (and ask for extra credit of course) and papers to grade-- probably the most painful part of the job. It will all get done some how, it always does, but it's exhausting!!

I have also worked a couple of basketball and football games which are fun; I would probably be at home watching them anyway so I might as well get paid! I have also been working with a couple of teams as a sport psychology consultant which is a new challenge!

Mikel is getting ready for a CRAZY week at Sears! Black Friday is good money but he has to go in super early (4am I think)! He's been hanging out with friends, working, and fishing mostly. And helping me out with all the craziness he can!

As for Thanksgiving, we will probably be going over to some friends houses. People from both Sears and MSU have invited us over so we will most likely make a couple stops and then get home early so Mikel can get some sleep!

Below are some pictures I've taken at some recent events--

The Magic Johnson statue in front of the Breslin Center...
A spartan head in the brick outside the basketball coaches' offices....
Football game vs. Penn State...
The view from the top of the stadium...


And this is 'Johnny Spirit'. He is MSU's superfan and he is ALWAYS dressed like this. He is the one who leads the Sparty Guard before MSU plays UM in football!

This picture was actually at the volleyball game last night. MSU had their last home game of the season against Minnesota last night!
That's our life in a nutshell (at least the past couple of weeks)!

Mikel's steelhead

it's already November?!?!

The last week or so has been crazy busy around here! There's a six more weeks of school left (including finals week) and I can't decide if I'm excited or stressed about that- definitely a mixture! Things are picking up for Mikel and work with Christmas approaching so they have extra meetings and extended hours until the end of the year. Hopefully that means extra hours and sales!!

As for Christmas break, I have three weeks off of school which I am sooo excited for. We will be here for Christmas again because of Mikel's work and our money and then we will each be taking a trip to visit (me to California and Mikel to Idaho). I will be in Riverside the beginning of January and we are looking for the best time for Mikel to go to Idaho. Unfortunately, we're not rich yet (dangit!) so living without student loans means, right now, we can't both make both trips but thought it was most fair that we each got to see our families.

Recent happenings.... Mikel has been fishing as much as possible and enjoying that, I have been grading papers like crazy. Why do I assign all this writing?! I also may have my first sport psych consulting experience coming up with a team here at MSU and have been working one or two events a week. This week it was a basketball game last Sunday and a football game yesterday. Things are going really well here and I can't wait to get our fake little Christmas tree out and get ready for the end of the semester!!