I am lucky enough to have a close-knit family, whom I miss dearly whenever I am 836 miles away at school for the majority of the year. When I come home, I have three things I always do:

1. Eat Mom’s mac and cheese with Carolina Packers hot dogs (the bright red ones)

2. Not make my bed and claim that my Mom misses doing my laundry

3. Stay up late with Mom (sometimes Dad!) and watch videos of Jimmy Fallon and James Corden sketches, consistently claiming, “Last one, I swear!”

I honestly don’t know how this little quirky tradition of ours started. However, I have been dragging people in front of computer screens to show them the latest funny videos I had discovered since basically the invention of YouTube (my holy grail).

My family and I have good senses of humor and late night talk shows apparently fit the bill. I enjoy sitting on the couch or at the kitchen table with my parents (which eventually ends up being just my mom) for a couple of hours clicking on videos that seem, and end up being, hysterical.

Our favorite sketches are the Lip Sync Battles, Wheel of Impressions, and Kid Theater (both the videos of Channing Tatum and Michael Keaton made us die), and James Corden’s car karaoke.

I wanted to write a little blurb on this because I have come to realize that life is about appreciating the little things. I don’t get a lot of time at home, and when I do come home, I’d rather spend that time with my family. There are very few people from high school I actually still talk to and besides the ones I do still see, I also want to have as much time with my family as possible because I know that as the years progress, I will be spending less and less time at home. Who knows how much I will actually be in this country?

Although it may seem like an odd tradition to some, I am perfectly ok with just sitting with my family and laughing. We get around to having conversations, but to me, laughter is what has kept us so close for so long. And I would not change that for the world.