Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, the bird says it all... Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

I'm sorry about the lack of posts this week. I've been working a ton but also got some not-so-good family news. My grandma was diagnosed with leukemia this past week, and it's kind of a shock to the whole family. She is in her 80s, but she is very very strong. We have a lot of hope of course, but it's still scary. She started her treatment this week and will continue the treatment once a month, for five days, for the next 6 months. It's just a bummer because earlier this year she fell and shattered her jaw and wasn't able to talk for about 3 months. My Grandma is very very social (I swear her schedule is more packed than mine ever was!) so you can imagine that this was very hard for her. When she was finally able to talk, she had a couple of infections and started to feel really weak. When she went in to get her nose infection checked out she felt that something was up and decided to get some blood work done. Thankfully she decided to get the blood work because that is how she found out that she had cancer. This was only in the past couple of months that she started feeling tired and weak, so hopefully that means she caught it early. Either way, I am hopeful that she will pull through. She's been through a lot and she's ready to tackle this cancer - hopefully in May she will be in remission and she won't have to have any more treatment!

Sorry for the dump of sad news, but that's just what's going on right now. This Thanksgiving, which counts my 5th year in a row that I'm not home, I'm thinking even more about how blessed I am to have the family that I do. Of course I am always thankful, but today it hits home, and I'm glad we have a holiday that focuses solely on that: being thankful. I was lucky to have my Grandma Gies til I was 21, and hopefully Grandma Betz will be around for many years to come. Either way, I am glad that I have been so loved and cared for by my grandmas - I have so many great memories tied to both of them and around the holidays. One being that we would have a cousin sleepover at my Grandma Betz's house the night of Thanksgiving and we would get to stay up playing Nintendo and watch movies and wake up to homemade pancakes and waffles. It seriously was the best thing ever. The thing I'm most thankful for today is that everything worked out with missing work and I get to go home for Christmas. I get to spend time with my family and most importantly, my Grandma. I am sad that Nick won't be coming with me, but I know there won't be a lot of Christmases where it's guaranteed that we'll be going to Oregon. I guess that's what happens when you get married!

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful day of giving thanks and eating yummy turkey! Nick works til 6:30 and I have to go into work Black friday at 11:30 pm, so we decided to keep things simple and have a non-traditional dinner at a restaurant. That way I won't have to worry about cooking by myself all day and then cleaning everything up later when we could just be spending time together. I get off at 9 am tomorrow, and he will go back to work at 9:30, so I may not see him til he gets off tomorrow night! Yeah, definitely not your traditional Thanksgiving, but I'm OK with it. I am happy I can at least enjoy it with Nick, and hopefully next year we'll actually get a turkey dinner!

Have a great day, and if you're going Black Friday shopping, best of luck to you! Hopefully the cans of mace will be on lock-down, haha ;)