I have thought about my childhood and I came to the realization that in some ways I feel that I am an adult but I am not completely there yet. I suppose any twenty six year old would be in the same boat. My family was not religious or had many traditions so our rite of passage was a little more under the radar than most. I can recall when I got my driver’s license my mom and dad had a long drawn out talk about responsibility and adult regulations, and I think that was when my life went from a narrow “what fun thing am I gonna do today” view of the world, to “oh my god there are more people than just me that my life affects”, mentality. Suddenly I had a car that needed the gas tank filled, the oil changed, the windows cleaned, and I had to be the one to do that. That was not even the scariest part; I came to the grim realization that I had to pay for these things. Soon after receiving my license I joined the working class. Driving myself began a chain reaction, or really a flood of adulthood. One instant I was playing hide and go seek and the other I was flipping pizzas and filling gas tanks. My rite of passage was not just the single moment of driving, but more of maintaining this privilege by holding a job and keeping good grades. My family recognizes the passing of the baton from childhood to adulthood and they begin to ask more of me as well.
My family still treats me as if I were just a little younger than I am, though, because I am the youngest of the children. My mom mostly, I think because if I stay young in her eyes than she doesn’t worry about me as much. It can be frustrating at times because I would like to be treated as I were an equal and I do not get that respect. Graduating college is the final step into complete adulthood in my family. Marriage and a family is important, but in my parent’s eyes, none of those could or should be accomplished without a degree. That idea has been instilled in all of us children so we believe that that idea holds true. I would like to believe that I am an adult, but for now I enjoy my youth and I realize that I do have responsibility, but I still have a lot of growing up to do and there will be a time in my life where I really feel like I have completely stepped into adulthood. I hope that I am prepared when that moment comes.

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Relatives can be fickle people. It’s okay to not really care for them very much. I used to struggle with the feeling that I don’t like my step granny. It just didn’t feel right to not like certain family members, after all, they are family right? We are taught to love our family members even if we don’t especially like them. Well, the older I’ve gotten and the more I have developed as a person, I have come to realize that I don’t need to tell myself I like someone just because I should. My big, bad step granny has always made me uncomfortable and shy. When I was young I wasn’t real sure why, but I could never warm up to her. Now that I’m all grown up I can see her evil little ways. The woman is constantly bombarding everyone with petty, pointless little jabs that are intended to chip away at our self esteem until we all go home with our heads hung low while squawks out the front door what a great time she had and to come back soon. It’s like her victory song. Recently, my grandfather, whom I’ve never been extremely close to and who is married to the evil step granny decided to help me pay for my graduate degree….Mmmk, this was an unexpected offer, but we share an interest in the subject and he told me I deserved it. Sweet! Then, after breaking down my expenses, tuition cost, and budget for him in an email like he asked, instead of the extra $5000 a year he said he could do, he comes back with $50.00 a month during each semester. A grand total of $400 a year. Everything helps it really does, but I just know my evil step granny was behind this change of heart. It’s what she does.

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Breast milk has tons of benefits not found in infant formula. Despite the common notion that formula is almost as good as breast milk, it’s just not so. Infant formula is a decent alternative to the real thing if the mother is unable to nurse, but it still does not contain many of the nutritious properties of natural breast milk. The first dose of breast milk that a baby receive, colostrum, contains tones of antibodies and acts as a laxative to purge waste from the babies bowls that may have built up in utero. The composition of mature milk is slightly different from colostrum, but still very advantageous. Every time a mother breast feeds her baby, she is delivering a dose of immune-boosting live white blood cells that help her baby fight off all kinds of diseases. The fats, vitamins, and minerals delivered through breast milk are incredibly easy for babies to digest and absorb. Interestingly, studies show that breast feeding has an impact on the intelligence of the child in addition to providing optimal nutrition. Breast feeders metabolize fatty acids better which has a positive affect on a kid’s IQ. Fevers early on in infancy can negatively impact brain development causing a lowered IQ as well. Since breast milk is chalk-full of immunity promoting properties, it can help to reduce the risk of fevers that can fry baby’s brain. While I don’t have babies and haven’t been faced with the decision, I like to think I would opt to up my baby’s chances of success by breast feeding the sucker.

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I recently watched this show on MTV where there were three people looking for their real dads. One of them found his real dad, and got to meet up with his uncle who took him over there. They sat down and talked for the rest of the day, and then when he left they exchanged numbers. At the end of the show it said they only talked one more time afterwards, though. One of the girls was told that it would be almost impossible to find her dad because of his common last name on the birth certificate. She said she would never give up. The other girl found out that her dad had passed away when she was 11. To me, only one of these stories would be relatively happy, though all of them would be incredibly difficult. I have been so lucky to have never had to deal with anything like this. I grew up with both my parents married, and everyone in my family had it just as easy as I did. Finding him and the finding out he was dead would be really difficult. You would be upset, but it would mean that at least you found him and the constant searching was over. It would be a hard mourning situation because he had passed away so many years ago. And, for the other girl, never being able to find my dad would be the hardest. You would never know what had happened to him, or anything about your past. I feel so bad for these people, and it makes me feel more appreciative that I have the life that I do, because things could be so much worse than they are.

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I’ve been at a loss this holiday season for what I want for Christmas. Each year, it seems like there’s at least one thing that I really want to get, but this year I just cant think of anything. I had been brainstorming, and there’s nothing I NEED need. I have all the TVs in my house working and doing good, I have my car, I have my iPod, clothes, shoes, all the good stuff that most people ask for. I do need a new cell phone, but that is going to be free when I upgrade on my cell phone plan. So, this weekend we took a trip to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, which I’m not very familiar with. I know how to look up addresses and I’m really good with a map, but it’s just not the easiest way to find your way around unless you have a detailed map of each city that you need to look at. So, on this trip, I have my sister’s house address, I know what city she lives in, and that’s about all I can remember in the dark. If it weren’t for my cousin’s GPS I don’t know if we would have ever found the house, or if we did it would have taken a lot longer. You just have to enter in an address on the little gadget and it will take you right where you need to be. It even talks to tell you when you need to turn. I think I know what I want to get now, it’s a luxury that I’ve never had and never thought I’d need, but after seeing what it’s capable of I want one too.

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Tomorrow on the Texas Tech campus they are having the annual Carol of the Lights. Every year, you can go on campus and enjoy the Christmas festivities. It will start at 7 pm. Get there early and head back into the Quad, where you will see the choir and get to hear them sing Christmas Carols. All the sidewalks will be lit with candles and it will be dark. They give out glow sticks to the kids, and everyone gets to the center where the choir is singing, and then they will turn on all the lights on campus. There are more than 25,000 lights lit at one time, on eleven of the buildings on campus that are around memorial circle. There’s a big Christmas tree at the entrance of campus that is thirty-eight feet tall. So don’t forget to bring your camera and take tons of pictures of the family with the giant tree and all the lights, it could make for a good Christmas card pictures! This is another one of those moments that just let you know Christmas is soon, and I’ve made sure to go every year since I’ve been living in Lubbock. If you live in Lubbock, make sure you go. Bring the kids, it’s a nice evening of family fun that doesn’t cost a dollar and gets everyone in the holiday spirit early. It’s going to be chilly, so don’t forget to grab your scarves and sweaters and get some hot chocolate before heading out there!

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I am the oldest of three children and because of that I get into more arguments with m siblings than anyone I know. My sister is the kind that was always pretty and popular and had whatever she wanted and needed handed to her. My brother is head strong, and opinionated, and above all gay. There are issues between all of us. I became pregnant with my daughter when my sister was eighteen and in high school. By the time my daughter was born my sister was pregnant with my niece. The reason was because the attention was no longer on her. What a reason to get pregnant right? We all had the feeling that this was the reason why. Then she became a step mom to her boyfriend, now husband’s previous child. I’m not saying she is a bad mom but she does pawn her child off on other people in order to continue the teenage newly married lifestyle. I keep my niece once a month because that is the only way I can see her unless I want to travel to the town she lives in. My husband thinks she takes advantage of me but I really love my niece. My brother to me doesn’t have many flaws except he doesn’t help much around the house. It’s to be expected however with a young man living his dream. He will soon be headed back to New York where he feels at his best, because that is what he calls home.

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So, as I’ve been talking about for a few months, my sister is pregnant. This is going to be the first baby in our family, so the first time I get to be an aunt. I am so excited already, and very impatient when it comes to getting all the new information. Soooo.. as I said last week, she was going to the doctor to find out what the gender of the baby is going to be. She has said that she planned on waiting to tell us until we were all together and in person over the holidays, but I really doubted that she could keep it from me. I called her and she told me… it’s a boy! We were all so sure it was going to be a girl, so most of us were surprised, but I am still just as excited as before. She told me right when I called, but I wasn’t aloud to tell anyone, so that’s why I didn’t want to write about it on here just in case. You never know what my family is doing, and them creeping on here wouldn’t surprise me at all! So, I’m going to be the proud aunt of a little boy here in April, and I get more excited each day!

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My family always does things big. All of our get togethers involve lots of wine and hanging out, tons of food, and someone always gets into some kind of trouble. This year, we all got together to eat at my Grandma’s. Before we went, my cousins and my brother and I decided that we needed to meet up and pick out some games to play while we were over there. So, we went to my aunts house and looked in the closets, found a few to bring, and then decided to work on the kegs that they had over there. We had a few beers, make some White Russians, and decided that it was going to be one of “those” holidays. Before we went over to my grandma’s, my brother and I stopped and bough each of us a Five Hour Energy because he was tired. So, before we even begun the diner, we had all had a few drinks, and were all hopped up on energy drinks. The dinner was AMAZING. We were all laughing, everyone was in a good mood, and afterwards we all got to play games because no one was tired from eating so much. So, for anyone that thinks their family holidays need a little bit of a boost, I can say that the Five Hour Energy shots will be a tradition in ours from now on probably.

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One year at Thanksgiving when we were younger, my aunt decided that she wanted to try and make a fruit salad pudding concoction for dessert. She got all the ingredients together and started cooking, but something in the middle of the process didn’t go right. By the time dinner was ready, it was apparent that the dessert didn’t come out how it was supposed to. Now, on a different but related tangent, we always make it a point to play lots of games when my family gets together, and one of the most popular to play is called Balderdash. It’s a game where when it’s your turn, you get to draw a card that has a word and the definition of the word. Then, everyone gets to try and make up a definition of the word that they think the other people will pick as the right one. Then, everyone gets to vote on what definition is the right one, and the person with the most votes on their definition wins. So, the same year that the dessert didn’t work my family was playing the game when the word “zizzyvau” came up. Someone decided that the definition of this word should be the leaky dessert that my aunt had attempted, and put that down as their definition. Hilarity ensued, and over a decade later my aunt still makes the drippy dessert and we still call it zizzyvau. It’s things like this that I love, just the random traditions that wont ever go away. And this year, the zizzyvau was just as good as the first time.

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