I'm Dreaming of a Whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite post-Thanksgiving!!!!!!

Yeesh, what a crazy but fun week I've had!

Thanksgiving was a blast- I drove to Cali with my 2 brothers and a cousin to spend the holiday with my adopted family. I got to visit many members of my biological family also, which was awesome. Thanksgiving was AMAZING and I have MY FAMILY as the #1 thing I'm grateful for. I'm sooo grateful to have been adopted and to be a Lauritzen! I'm going on 3 months now, but it seems like it's been an eternity with them already and I hope it ends up as one. I got to decorate the table by myself- my Mom was super tired and overwhelmed the night before so I snuck into the dining room after she went to bed and stayed up until 1am decorating and cleaning the place :) I'm glad I finally have somewhere to go and people to visit for the holidays that I can call my own family, people who are interested in my well-being and who sacrificed so much just to call themselves my family. I had sooooooo much fun visiting my Twin Sister, seeing family and friends, playing with 16 kids and consuming a week's worth of calories..

We all talk about things we're grateful for during Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving's over now so let's get real. Today has been a very ungrateful day for me. Don't get me wrong, everyone and their moms know that I am Miss Grateful when it comes to life but today just hasn't been my day!!

Lemme start off by saying that I'm in Utah.. here's where the *understanding spot* in everyone's hearts may swell a bit, hopefully.. Yep, I just got back to Utah (safely) last night from my Thanksgiving vacation. I woke up this morning and got ready for Church and the minute I went outside I was like WHOAAAFALIPATHUHH!!!!!!

It was snowing outside!!! Not just light snow, like the kind we hope to someday see on Christmas day, but HUGE HEAPS of it was falling from the sky!!! Nonstop!!!

Luckily I was wearing cowboy boots, and as I trodged (I don't even know if that's even a word) through what seemed like almost a foot of snow covering my lawn, I finally found my car. Literally, there was soo much snow, I couldn't tell the difference between what was the street and what was the curb. It was awful.

..So I scraped off all the snow from my windows and mirrors (with my bare fingers and a Styrofoam plate because I'm from California and no one tells me where to get snow scrapers from..) and finally get inside my car and head to Church. About 2 blocks away from my house, my car swerves to the right and gets stuck in a giant pile of snow and won't move AT ALL. I was like, ughhhhh this can't get any worse!!! No matter how I tried to accelerate, my car would not go anywhere! I thought of taking a snow day from Church but realized that it wouldn't benefit me in any way so I finally gave my accelerator a good long shove and gunned it and finally was in the street again.

I made it safely to Church at the end of the first meeting, had a great day, and here's what made me ungrateful-- As I was leaving Church, I again attempted to shovel the thick snow off my windshield, mirrors and windows (again using an old plate and my bare fingers) and finally got the car started. As I was driving, I noticed some strange skid marks in the street and wondered why 2 cars had decided to park their cars in a bush with their trunks halfway in the street. I know it was cold outside, but it looked dangerous to park there! The drivers were talking amongst themselves and I was like, hah, what a bunch of gimps.. and no sooner had I pulled out, my car started veering left STRAIGHT TOWARDS THEIRS!!! I had no idea what to do-- my breaks weren't working and my car was just **sliding** their direction! I had to make a quick decision and ram my car into the same pile of snow and bushes that theirs were in. That's when I realized that the other 2 cars there had swerved and crashed, and were just as unfortunate as I was..

Here's the worse part- My car had stopped about 3 feet away from rolling down a hill and into oncoming traffic!!! As I put my car in park and tried to calm myself down and catch my breath and stop shaking, I heard people screaming and BAM!!! Another car slammed right into my tail.

It was then that I had many ungrateful thoughts come to mind. Thoughts like *I HATE UTAH* and *I HATE SNOW* and *I WANNA GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA* Some people came by and asked if I needed to borrow their cell phone and I thought, who would I even call?? I don't have too many close friends in Utah, at least not that I can call if I ever got in an accident, and my only family is in California!! So I did what the typical California girl does and I called my attorney. (Apparently he wasn't reliable on the weekends, ugh..) So I called my dad and inquired of his expertise opinion.

Although this all happened so fast and I didn't see any of it coming, here's what I learned that I should have been grateful for:

-I was safe and didn't get hurt (luckily no one did)

-My car only had a few scratches on it and no major damage was done, but the other cars were bent and busted up

-I made it home safely afterwards despite the continuous harsh weather conditions

-I DO have a family who loves and cares about me, and I know that they pray for me and my safety each night and that's probably the main reason I was okay

Maybe this accident was meant to happen. Maybe I was meant to have been involved in these so I can have experience driving in the snow and so I will know what precautions I should take to keep safe in this weather. Maybe I was meant to have a few dings on my car so I wouldn't be so prideful and laugh at other peoples' cars and how bad they looked. Maybe I was meant to go through this so I can practice using and trusting my judgement, just in case if something worse may come in the future- and I'll be more prepared next time.

I'm glad that I learned how to drive slowly and safely so I don't not only threaten my own life, but the lives of others around me. It's not fair for me to say that I am ungrateful for ANYTHING I've been through in my life because the good has always come in the end and I know that it always will come- and for that knowledge, for those experiences, for my very life, I am grateful.

Gloomy Day today.. but no reason not to SMILE!!! :-)

Halloween was Awesome!!! I got Lots of candy the popular way: by Trick-or-Treating. :) Hey, all the kids are doing it these days and chya know, it was free..

I never thought I'd be saying this- but I LOVE MONDAYS!!!! Why, you may ask? Well, unlike most "normal" people who make unconscious decisions to slave away in a cubicle or in a classroom fulla smelly college kids with glazed looks in their eyes, all hyped up on diet Coke and Jolly Ranchers from last night's hoppin' party.... I've decided to take Mondays off everything- off work, off school, off life so I can catch up with my personal life. Kinda like Missionaries and their P-days.

On Mondays, I get to sleep in, run errands, grocery shop, exercise, take a dance class, FHE with friends, catch up on all the homework I've procrastinated, study for tests, paint my nails, draw, enjoy the snow while eating candy & skipping merrily down the street, run back inside because it's flippin' Freezing outside, run back outside because I dropped my candy on the floor, run back inside and determine how many seconds the candy was on the floor to see how sick I'll get if I ate it, run back outside to examine the Exact location the candy landed to see if any bugs or dirt was there also, run BACK inside because it's freezing outside still, run a personal cost/benefit analysis on myself to consider the effects if I did eat this highly-coveted piece of sugary goodness, eat the candy, run outside and barf, run inside and watch the barf freeze onto the pavement, run to a Doctor's office....

Just kidding. Hahaha..

Right now I'm staying productive and warm. It snowed outside earlier then rained and all the snow's gone. I'm a little worried because I've heard that it's awful trying to drive in rain/snow and that I need to get certain types of tires to accommodate my driving.. I have a dance class to go to at 7 that I hope I can learn how to glide from and not my car.

It's getting a little better- the whole "seperation" process. I talk to Karri all the time via Skype, text messaging, Facebook and phone calls. We also send pictures back and forth all the time. I miss her a lot, but I've learned from my own analogy of homework- no matter how much you kick and scream and throw a tantrum over it being hard, boring, dumb, not challenging enough or lame, it's still due the next day. Similarly, no matter what I do, she's still in California. I trust that she's doing well out there and I imagine that she trusts that I'm doing well out here. One more month and I'll go to California during Christmas break and go see her and the rest of the family. I can't wait for that day- but there's no point in moping around or being depressed because eventually, the time will come. I have to remain positive while I'm out here. The good will come- it always does.

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