Thanksgiving break

Lesson from Thanksgiving: Never eat Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. The tables will be cramped, you won't all fit at one or even two tables, you can't control your portion size, the waiter tries taking away everything a minute after you touch it, you argue over the check, just don't do it. I had a great time playing with Lena and sitting at the kids table though, ha.

The Artemas Family

The Stornello children with Maria, Eleni and I

Later that night, I got a really massive headache (worse than usual). It clearly wasn't from the food, since I ate very little from entertaining Lena so much. I thought I'd solve it by taking a nap on the couch before Black Friday shopping with Eleni at Wal-Mart at midnight. Still in pain upon waking up, Black Friday seemed like the most viable option. $225 worth of Christmas shopping done, plus these matching shirts for my sisters and I! Success right? I woke up pretty early the next morning to fly to Kansas City.

Friday was pretty nice, as I was welcomed with some nice surprises on my flight. I was expecting some type of Mizzou population because the Kansas rivalry is a popular game, so not only did I see a GBN graduate who attends Mizzou on the flight, but also the chancellor of the University and his wife! I recognized them at the terminal and approached them to say hello. We talked for about 10 minutes outside, and they ended up sitting in the row right behind me on the plane. It was a nice family feeling we all had :).

Laura picked Andrew, Kathryn and I up from the airport and we headed to where we were staying in Shawnee, Kansas. We caught up and hung out like the exciting friends we are for quite a few hours, and didn't head to Overland Park to pick up Asher until past 7 p.m. We went to the Plaza with its holiday lights for a nice dinner and some phenomenal shopping at Forever 21, which was a nice way to keep us occupied with a two-hour dinner wait.

Andrew, Asher, Laura, Kathryn and I on the Plaza

I even took pills to keep me alive for the day, which is ironic since I'm one of those crazy humans that believes the majority of pills are placebos and that they are a waste of money and faux medicine. So after roaming the Plaza, we had a lovely dinner at P.F. Changs and headed back to Kansas. For those of you who don't know, Kansas City is on both the Kansas AND Missouri side, separated by the clever "State Line Road." The city itself is gorgeous and very classy, a great place to live as a young adult (an apartment downtown, which is on the Missouri side) or with a family (in which case you want to be in the nicer Kansas suburbs). So we headed back to shop for our well-planned out tailgate at 8 in the morning and get some rest before the big MU-KU game...the purpose of our trip.

We got to Arrowhead Stadium nice and early for the game, and took a mini-van with seven students and a TON of tailgating supplies. Between a cooler, chairs, table, grill, food and more, our bodies barely fit in the car, but we were cheap teenagers who didn't want to pay $26 more for our comfort and parking confusion. We had a nice morning before the 11:30 game, and walked in to see zero Kansas fans and a pretty packed stadium of Mizzou fans. It was almost embarrassing how they had NO student fans show up. But we won 35-7, and my friends had great seats so it was a fun game to watch.

After the game, we went back to Kansas again, just to get ready to go to dinner at the Power & Light District of Kansas City. We watched some more football and then actually got a good night's sleep before going back to school in the morning! It was a great Thanksgiving break and despite my current state of illness, I was not too exhausted from my traveling. It's always nice to spend time with friends in exciting places, cheer on your school and see family over a break. Now, to see if Mizzou goes to a Bowl game and if we can do it all again!