Thanksgiving is this Thursday so I figured I would talk about that. This year we are all going over to my aunt Carla's house and eating turkey and ham and everything that goes with. Normally it would just be my mom's side of the family and then my dad's side would just come by for pie a little bit later but this year it is a little different. My uncle and aunt and two cousins are still going to drop by later for pie but my grandma is going to come over and eat with us. Now that my uncle Dave is gone its has been extremely hard on here. Especially with the holidays right around the corner. So we invited her over to come eat with us so she decided she would come. Normally on Thanksgiving I would be most excited about the food and say a few things I am thankful for and that would be it. However, this year is a little different I'm not as excited because i know how painfully it is for her and my dad. This year I realized I have a lot more to be thankful for then I ever realized. I am thankful for my family and how I know they will always be there for me in time of need like they have been for my grandma and dad. They have been very supportive and it really made me realize how truly amazing they are. Overall though I am thankful for my life and I know it can be taken away at any minute and to enjoy it while you have it. I see myself getting happy over simpler things and really appreciating everything I have and do. So this Thanksgiving really think about how lucky you are and be thankful. =D

This past weekend my uncle Dave passed away. It was really hard on my whole family, especially my grandma. She lives in a big house out in Yucipa and has 5 acres and has horses and my unlce Dave lived with her and really helped her keep up the ranch. Now that he is gone she is all alone in that big house with a ton of work that has to be done. My whole family has really stepped up and tried to help but it has been really hard to adjust. But back to my unlce. He was born with a rare disease, which i can't ever remember the name, but it causes you to have too much iron in your body which then attacks your organs. It can also affect the brain and it caused him to be very short. My dad and other uncle Dan, Dave's brothers, towered over him. They are both about 6ft tall and he was only about 5'2". They doctors didn't know what he had until recently when he got sick and they looked more into his disease.. It was hard for him growing up but he dealt with it. The thing that is a miracle is that he died at age 47 but the life expectancy for a person with that disease is only in their twenties. The doctors said it had a lot to do with where he lived. I never thought that where you lived could effect you that much. They said sense they lived way out there and they were sort of by themselves it helped him. It is also colder out there which kept disease away which was good because he had a weak immune system. This was a very hard weekend but it got me thinking about how living somewhere could truely have a great impact on your life like it did on his. Just a thought.

home is where the heart is

This past Friday I went to my high schools football game. My mom told me I had to take my brother and his friend and my boyfriends parents always go to the games because his sister is in cheer, so we decided to just go. It was my friend Corrina, my boyfriend Cory, and me. It was a really big game because they were playing their cross town rivals RHS, Redlands High School, but luckily Cory's parents were saving us seats.

It took forever to find parking but once we finally did we started walking toward the stadium. Corrina and I were laughing at ourselves because when we were seniors we always made fun of people who had graduated and came back to the games and now we were those people. As we walked in my brother and his friend went there own way and we ended up seeing a ton of other people we graduated with. It was really fun seeing all of our old friends and it made me realize how much i missed them. We finally made it too our seats and the game started. We found ourselves yelling and cheering just like when we were students there. The whole game we were all talking about all of our memories from Friday night football games. It ended up being a lot of fun! The final score was 14-12; REV won! =D Being back at the game made me really miss high school; well at least that part of it. It brought back so many memories and I felt like I was home again being there. I never realized how big apart of me that school is and even though I have moved on with my life it will always be a part of me.

When thinking about what to write about my city I realized that there really was much to say. I tried to look up the history and the only thing remotely interesting, while sort of disappointing, was that Highland also refers to a geographical area of the City of San Bernardino (generally north of Highland Avenue and east of Del Rosa Avenue to the eastern city limits). So really my "city" is more of an area! It was actually funny to read that. When I asked my mom for ideas she told me that I spent most of my time in our neighboring city Redlands and to talk about something there instead. So after thinking a little I decided that; yeah that was where I spent most of time. That’s where I play and now coach soccer, where I went to middle school and high school. Redlands has always been known for its oranges and every year on the front of our yearbooks would be pictures of oranges or orange trees. Redlands was the first city to have center medians with trees or gardens in between roads and Redlands is still regarded as the "Jewel of the Inland Empire." I have never heard it referred to as that but when I look on Wikipedia that is what it said. I also found out that its approximate population is around 72,008 people. Some famous residents are Landon Donovan, a professional soccer player for Galaxy; Neal T. Baker, founder of Baker’s Drive Thru (which I thought was cool because I love Bakers); Patrick Johnson, a professional football player for the Baltimore Ravens; Josh Whitesell, a professional baseball player for the Arizona Diamondbacks; and Dave Stockton, a professional golfer; just to name a few. These are just a few things I found out when looking up Redlands but I was fun to learn more about it.