doing this for my family!

so the december youth in government conference is coming up and i am WAY excited. as many of you know, i am running to be the 22nd youth governor of south carolina, and right now, i am feeling on top of the world. yeah. i am. and it didn't just come out of nowhere.

it came out of today.

so thanksgiving break has been fantastic. i've got to relax, sleep, laze off, play video games, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, relax, laze off, eat, sleep, play video games, get on the computer, chat, eat, sleep, relax, chat, laze off.. and.. spend time with my family. thanksgiving wasn't as "amazing" as it always was, we kinda messed up on the food, but it makes for a good laugh, right?

and even though my parents forgot about pumpkin pie (i know, what a sin. lolz jk.), we had apple raspberry slab pie and it wasn't a horrible substitute. it worked out. black friday was nice -- i got to sleep in and my dad actually went to circuit city and bought me okami (which is a wicked wii game, thankyouverymuch). it was nice.

i've had a lot on my mind and it's still on my mind -- and i really wanted to blog this emo thing but when my #1 played song on iTunes is going through my ears, and all i can hear are happy chords of E major, i can't go emo. even though the song is about.. not writing love songs. haha. but still :]

if your heart is nowhere in it, i don't want it for a minute.

ahh, this song never seems to get old to me. i've loved it since january, and it still seems like a breath of fresh air whenever "new" songs go old. i swear i've heard it like a thousand times, sang it a capella a million, half of them probably off-pitch. :] (hm. or we should switch those numbers. not sure.)

so today i was supposed to go out to a friend's neighborhood and fundraise for YIG. it was sort of a planned thing, but in the end, i didn't get a call, and when i had called, they had gone without me. i sort of felt betrayed, but i don't know the full details of the situation, so i can't truly pin the blame on anyone right now. regardless, i have a lot to do .. and then came the fans. my campaign requires 100 paper fans, out of construction paper, glued on with popsicle sticks for them to stand up, and a pin that says "Keeping YIG Cool: Fan for Governor!" which makes it look super awesome. Well, I had to make.. 75 of them. And I thought I couldn't do it. As I struggled, folding, creasing, grunting, and gluing -- my mother decided to pitch in.

And the irony of it all -- my mom and dad had made these in grade school, and I quote from my mom (translated in English lol): "i used to make so many of these that i was sick of them!" oh, my mom is cute.

in the end (yeah, i decided to go back to lowercase.), my dad and mom were with me, in the living room for about 2 1/2 hours.. folding fans. I was gluing, dad was folding, mom was "making them into beautiful fans." And yeah.. they looked better than the super-rushed ones we made a few weeks ago. But more importantly.. they were made by my family. My parents - who devoted two hours of their day .. making fans for me.

And so.. on Friday, when I place these fans on each YIG delegation's table -- I am putting them down with the laughter that we had making these, the creativity and spark of my mother, the rapid work-work-work drive of my dad, and my horrible centeredness. But more than that.. love.

And that's what we need with YIG. Love. And unity.

So I'm doing this for my family. My real family. My YIG family. My family.

And that means you too. :)