a good week
in stark contrast to the bad week i had earlier in the month of november, the week of thanksgiving was awesome. my brain was basically checked out from school by sunday evening since all i could think about was tuesday night when mariam was arriving.
those two days seemed to just float by, and then tuesday night i drove out to madison airport to pick up my girlfriend. it was really good to see her again after almost two months. she spent that night at my ward’s relief society president’s apartment. for some reason UW thinks that we are going to learn something on the wednesday before thanksgiving, so i had classes. mariam sat in my office working on homework while i suffered through two and half hours of lectures. it was such a relief to be finished! we walked over to the capitol to meet with aaron for lunch. we decided to give mariam a taste of wisconsin cuisine, so we went to the old fashioned, known for it’s fried cheese curds.
so good yet so bad. afterwards i gave mariam a tour of madison and campus, grabbing some babcock ice cream along the way, despite how cold it was outside.
after our tour and me doing some packing, we made our way up to baraboo to spend the evening with my parents. we watched “what’s up doc?” since mariam had never seen it. very funny.
i slept at a family friend’s house while mariam slept in my little brother’s old room. thursday morning i came over bright and early to wake her up.
amazing how beautiful she is at all hours of the day, isn’t it?
we drove back down to madison for a turkey bowl with my ward. it was lots of fun, though we lost. freezing and getting covered in mud made it worth it though. afterwards we met up with my friend thanh and we drove back up to baraboo for thanksgiving dinner. my sister’s family and my grandparents were also there, so that was nice. my mom decided to have our thanksgiving meal “catered” this year since, but that ended up being a bit of a bust: the grocery store gave us boxes of frozen mashed potatoes, frozen gravy, frozen stuffing, etc. but it still tasted fine. the company was more important than the food. after dinner we did the traditional game playing.
thursday night mariam and i went out to luke’s house to hang out with aaron, adam, and will. we watched a few of our favorite youtube videos from the past year (per tradition) then got out the wii. if you haven’t played the canoeing game in wii sports resort, you need to. so intense, i was sore for a few days.
friday i made everyone big breakfast then mariam and my mom worked on a tres leches cake (sadly it turned out a bit dry.. they should have listened to my suggestion). will and aaron went out to devil’s lake with us and we enjoyed a nice hike around the perimeter of the lake. then we drove up to the wisconsin dells to hit up the arcade and get some dinner at damon’s. team poop made a comeback and demolished the other teams at the damon’s quiz game. after that, mariam convinced me somehow to go see new moon. barf. she admitted it sucked too.
saturday mariam and i hit up the mall in madison so i could spoil her a bit. when we got back, we went with my parents to one of my favorite restaurants, the cheese factory for dinner. it was excellent as usual. then mariam and i went to babysit my nieces so my sister and her husband could go on a date. mariam spent the time getting the baby to fall asleep while i helped the other two direct dora the explorer in finding the lost city. we got the girls in bed, and we fell asleep to my neighbor totoro.
sunday we went to sacrament meeting in baraboo with the family, then we got mariam all packed up. i dropped her off for her flight and there i was, alone again. i was sad, but it was an awesome week and my christmas adventure in mexico is not that far off. i will make sure to blog about that too!