Hi. My name is Sarah and I'm a Thanksgivingaholic.

Thanksgiving is my favorite. I love the food. I love the dressing and the sweet potato crunch and the pumpkin pie. I can't forget about pie. I love getting together with my whole family without the worry of presents.  Thanksgiving is the best because it's all about food and family and food and laughing and food and being thankful and food.  Our great nation uses Thanksgiving as an excuse to gorge and over-indulge in food and then analyze sales circulars to strategize Black Friday shopping schedules.  Sounds like a winner to me.

I'm really hoping that this is a Thanksgiving that I can enjoy.  The two years prior things kind of got in the way of me being able to enjoy Thanksgiving to the fullest.  I wasn't able to fully throw down.  The Pilgrims and Natives would have been disappointed in me.  I just felt I wasn't able to do this glorious holiday justice.  It's time to take it back!  Two years ago, my doctor had me take a medicine that worked to suppress my appetite.  He picked the worst time of the year ever for that.  I couldn't eat hardly anything, which was totally the doctor's point, but I disliked it.  Don't mess with my food intake.  Last year I got H1N1 on Thanksgiving day.  It was fun.  This year I don't want any pills or any sickness.  I just want to eat.  And be able to enjoy it.  To the fullest.  Here's to what I'm hoping will be the best Thanksgiving of all time.

Thanksgiving is always a great time to reflect on my life and everything that I have.  I'm incredibly blessed and don't give thanks often enough for all that I do have.

I'm thankful for...

• the fact that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Tell me who's in the house?  J.C.
• my home.  It's cute and I've loved making it my own.  I'm proud of it.
• having a job that I love and twenty-something little kids that keep me smiling.
• my family that constantly support me, love me, and keep me laughing.
• my friends.  I'm blessed to have some great people who I can count on and who love me, even during my worst times.  I truly value my friendships.
• Daisy Mae.  I love my kid.  More than words.
• my blog readers.  I love seeing you all appear on my Feedjit.  It makes a big goofy smile stretch across my face.  That should make you feel good.
• my laminator.  Changes my life one laminating sheet at a time.
• sweet tea.  The wine of the south.  A good batch of sweet tea has at least two cups of sugar.  That's the rules.
• Netflix.  I'm a bit addicted.  
• food.  If you know me, you know I'm in a pretty hot and heavy relationship with food.  Gluttony? Guilty.
• Pandora radio.  Again, addicted.
• animals.  Animals are the best.  Especially those that are in or have been in my life.  Shout out to Daisy, Abby, my beloved Piper (Best cat ever.  I miss her so much), and Dusty.  I'm also thankful for the animals that are my favorites that I wish I could have like a koala and a river otter and a cria.
• the moon and the stars.  Beautiful little things.  Writing 'the moon and the stars' reminds me of that nice little diddy "I Swear" from All-4-One.  "...And I swear by the moon and the stars in the sky.  I'll be there..."  I'm thankful for that song too.
• writing.  I'm happy I can express myself.  I love writing.  This blog has allowed me to communicate a lot of thoughts and ideas.
• memories.  It sure is fun to reminisce.  
• the hard times.  They've made me stronger and wiser.  They've also made me realize who I can trust and count on.
• the little things in life.
• accomplishing goals.
• kind words that are said at just the right time.  You never know when your words might make someones day.
• being me.

I hope all of you have a Turkey-rific Thanksgiving.  Get your gobble on.  Don't disappoint me, please.  By the way, do you realize I used the word 'food' nine times in this blog?  I'm obviously ready.  Mmm.

I'mma shake what my mama gave me.

This song has been in my head for a solid week.  On constant repeat.  Everywhere.  At home.  In the car.  At school while I'm trying to teach.  In the drive-thru line.  When I'm in the shower.  While I'm on the toilet.  Everywhere.  I'm not complaining though.  No, no.  I mean, who doesn't love Trina?  Whoop! Whoop!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grmJsiGf5Bk

Thank you for being a friend.

If you want a very easy, very good dessert, well, this is it.  These little cheesecakes are a symphony of flavor in your mouth.

Mmm.  These are the good kind of cheesecakes.  It's not any of that soft no-bake crappy kind.  This is the hard, firm, good kind.  If you're a cheesecake lover, then you know what I'm talking about.  The Golden Girls would approve of these little babies.

Because I am a girl that loves food, I am passing on this very special recipe to you.  This is a reward for coming to my blog.  Do yourself a favor and make these.  Make them for an upcoming holiday gathering.  You only need four ingredients.  People that taste them will think that you used forty ingredients and spent fifty hours making them.  You can even make them and be selfish and hoard them all for yourself.  Let me know if you make them and be sure to tell me how much you fell in love.

Just click on this little picture to enlarge the best recipe of all cheesecake time.

P to the S: This recipe is from the 'Take Five A Holiday Cookbook" by Debbye Dabbs.  You are stellar, Debbye.

Sometimes I like to smell manly.

I really like men's shower gel.  I think it smells so good.  Better and cleaner and manlier than women's.  Is it bad that I use it sometimes?

Dining Solo.

Ashley and I were at a local restaurant having dinner (obviously) Wednesday evening.  Glancing around, we noticed not just one, but five or six men eating dinner solo.  Granted, these men were all eating at the bar.  This made it way more casual instead of eating alone at a table for one.  None of these men interacted.  They were there completely alone.  None of them were playing on their cell phone.  They just sat.  Ate.  Stared at the TV tuned in to SportsCenter.

We were a bit boggled by the amount of men eating alone.  My question: Why is it so much more common for a man to eat alone than a woman?  I could be wrong, but I feel like if I walked into a nice restaurant and ate alone, people would take pity on me.  Would they think I didn't have a friend to go eat with me?  Would they think I was being stood up by a date?  Honestly, I would feel insecure to be alone in a restaurant.  I'm an independent and self-reliant woman, but I don't know that I'm comfortable enough to go to a restaurant (and this wasn't a fast food place) and eat a full meal completely alone with zero conversation.

Women travel in herds.  We're socially-driven creatures. Sometimes we don't even go to the bathroom alone.  For me, eating is a social event.  You go out to eat for good food, but to also spend time with your family or your friend(s) that you're out with.  It just doesn't seem natural to go alone to a place that is generally spent in the company of others.

Why does it seem so natural and 'acceptable' for men to dine solo?  Do we assume the man is a bachelor that doesn't cook and is out wanting a good, hot meal?  Well, I'm a single lady that doesn't cook, but that's what drive-thrus are for.

So, what's the deal?  To the women:  Have you or would you go out to eat at a restaurant alone?  Would you be comfortable enough?

I'll never forget my first kiss. Even if I wanted to.

How many of you have a written account of your first kiss?  Well, I do.  That's because it just happened a few months ago and I wrote the experience down.  It's an unpublished blog that I'm still working on.  It will soon be released. Stay tuned.  Kidding.
I have an actual hand-written note recounting my first kiss experience.  I wrote the letter to my friend since elementary school, Rebecca *(http://thefirsthundred.wordpress.com).  I like to think that I grew up in the good old days.  I know everybody says that, but we lived in an age (not all that long ago, which is scary) long before texting, and facebook, and even AOL IM'ing (is IM'ing the correct term?  I don't even know).  Our extent of our lingo was 'wuz up (arrow pointing up)?  NMH.'
We wrote letters.  The majority of juicy gossip exchange was done through letter writing.  I still have many letters from friends from middle school and high school.  It was a way to stay occupied during class.  During locker breaks, you exchanged letters to your friends.  It's just what we did.
Rebecca held on to my 'first kiss letter' for many, many years.  I'm super impressed that she held onto it for so long.  She deserves an award for not only keeping it, but then finding it and mailing it back to the writer.  The letter even got wet from the rain at one point.  Hilarious.  It's like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  This letter may have traveled with her as she packed her belongings and moved to different locations throughout college.  Maybe it stayed tucked away in a box for years and years.  Maybe she even transferred it to the back pocket of her pants daily just to keep it close by in case she wanted to read it.  Very likely.  I don't know where it was kept all of those years.  The point is that she kept it.  Rebecca came across the letter and mailed it back to me during the summer of 2008.  I loved receiving this letter because it's a literal play-by-play of my first kiss story.  It's embarrassing because it's so dumb, and I shuddered at some of my spelling and grammatical mistakes, but it's so funny and I loved having the opportunity to relive the memory.
The letter is still neatly and crisply folded and it has a bluish tint from the rain bleeding some of the ink.  It's still very legible though.  Sadly, very legible.  In the letter I give details of the when and the where of the famous first kiss.  I even labeled: WHEN- and WHERE-.  I've always been a nerd.  The 'when' of the first kiss was on September 12.  I wish I knew the year, but I left that detail out.  I didn't date my original letter.  I was a late bloomer though when it came to having my first real boyfriend and first kiss.  My other friends, Casey and Sarah, had been stressing about the fact that I still had not received my kiss (I mentioned this fact in the letter).  I just can't remember if I was 15 or 16.  I know I wasn't old enough to drive.  That's why I had to have a boyfriend that was older and could drive.  I was a smart girl.  Rebecca probably knows how old I was.  She forgets nothing.
The 'where' of the kiss was my driveway as I was being dropped off from eating with the youth group at CiCi's.  Romantic.  I mentioned that I was a little disappointed with the kiss and that I even received a little chin slobber.  The boy that gave me my first kiss was my first love.  I was glad the experience was with him.  We were both shy and awkward at first.  The letter is funny.  I can sense my awkwardness and nervousness as I read my words.  Through reading, I was able to remember the events and I was taken back to that age of innocence when life was so simple, yet everything seemed so dramatic and earth shattering.  Funny how things change.  This letter is something I'll cherish for years to come.  I'm grateful to have it to recapture a bit of that memory.  Even though we remember moments and people we shared them with, we (or at least, I) often forget those little details and conversation exchanges.  It takes you back for a minute when you read about your experience.
So, thanks Rebecca for keeping my dorky letter.  I loved that you kept it.  I love that you mailed it back to me years later even more.  You're a pal among pals.  Not that you want to be thinking about Eden kissing boys, but make sure you tell her to write her experience down (when she has her first kiss in 30 years).  She'll appreciate seeing it again someday and hopefully she'll be lucky enough to have a friend to remind her of it.

*If you haven't checked out Rebecca's blog; do it.  Today.  She's the funniest blogger of all time.

I wanna go to Space Camp.

I started filling out a scholarship application for Huntsville Space Camp for Educators.  I was so pumped until I read the directions a little closer and noticed the scholarship is for teachers that teach 10-14 year olds.  Boo.  Kindergarten teachers like space too.
I'm going to search for other scholarship opportunities for Space Camp.  I want to go so badly.  So badly that I can taste the Milky Way.  The cost for the 5 day Space Academy for Educators is $699.  That's not a horribly expensive fee, but if I can find a way to get some or all of it paid for, I'll take it.  I'm on a mission.  Mission control.