A Cup of OJ: Give Thanks

Hi all! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and you are all recovering from your turkey comas! We had such an incredible Thanksgiving and it was so nice to be able to spend it together. We had, and continue to have, so much to be thankful for this year and I could list everything but it would be a novel. Three things I am especially thankful for are 1. Dad's health through this cancer and his amazing ability to continually stay so positive and bring humor to a scary situation. He inspires me everyday! 2. The amazing support we have from God, our family, friends, and staff at TGen. None of where we are today would be possible without them. 3. The ability to spend time together. Our family has always loved being together, going to dinners, movies, and all of that fun stuff but the last year has been really nice taking that extra time to be with each other!

We went to church in the morning and then I hosted dinner at my apartment... and I will just tell you all now, I have extreme appreciation for those who host dinner parties for large amounts of people/families! The timing of the oven items alone is truly an art, so cheers to all you kitchen masters! Poor Dad had to get a root canal the night before and had a hard time eating, but he still managed of course!

Dad feasting

<3<3<3

Things at TGen have been going great. The chemo days have been getting shorter and shorter and next week he will be done by lunch! Dad has made friends with I am pretty sure everyone who works there now and they all love him. When we were there yesterday for an exam I heard one of the nurses says "OJ is here!" to another nurse which just made me smile and reminded me of how great of an impact Dad has on peoples' lives. We will scan again on the 14th of December and will get the results that following Monday so until then we are just taking it day by day!

Dad, Kristen, and I have been able to see a few movies lately (honestly I have seen more movies with them in the last 4 months than I have seen combined in the last 3 years) and one that you all MUST see is Life of Pi! What an incredible movie, I think it was one of Dad and I's all time favorites! I could babble about it forever, so instead I will just recommend that you go see it. This is one of my favorite quotes from the movie which seemed to be so fitting to our lives:

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”

Most of the time when I write the blog, it is like a giant puzzle. Writing papers were never my forte in school so figuring out the flow of the post sometimes takes me longer than necessary. I can tell it is the end of the semester because all I want to do at this point is put everything else in a miscellaneous section instead of finishing it off smoothly...and that is what I am going to do :) Love you all!