By the way

a belated happy Thanksgiving!

We had a nice trip to see my folks in Indiana. Fun was had. Mistakes were made. Lessons were learned, as follows:

1. The correct egg nog-to-Bailey's ratio is not half and half. That's what they get for letting me be bartender. I eyeballed the situation, and figured that half a jingle bell mug was about equal to one shot. Everybody else thought that was a really bad call and let me hear about it for the rest of the night. Talk about drunk and disorderly! It was as if this was the worst batch of mixed drinks anybody had ever made in the history of getting wasted. I didn't think it was that bad.

2. Don't put your 3-year-old in the middle of a merry-go-round and trust that he'll remain stable while you spin it. I won't name names, but let's just say it was one of Casey's parents, and it wasn't me! Casey shifted, lost his balance, and succumbed to the centrifugal forces. He wasn't injured, but he landed on his face and got a full mouthful and a noseful of playground dirt. His tongue was so caked that we couldn't be sure he still had a tongue. Poor kiddo was so unhappy. Then he sneezed, and ... well, I'll spare you the grisly details. But suffice to say, we had no tissues with us, and there was one mitten that had to go into the washer immediately after we got back to the house.

3. Never go looking for a gas station in rural Indiana. On our journey home, we didn't realize we were so low on gas until we had passed the point of civilization. Our GPS told us the best option was five miles off the highway in a little town (if you can call it that) named Thorntown. In the spot where it told us Joe's Marathon would be was a hollowed-out carcass of a building with a few ancient-looking pumps outside. We drove around a little, thinking every small town, no matter how microscopic, must have a functional gas station. Not true. So I ran into a convenience store, where an employee told me the nearest gas station was about six miles further into the cornfields, in Dover. Thankfully we made it before hitting empty. But Chris complained that the whole experience hearkened a little too close to the plot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Not to complain too much. Sure, Darby ran a fever between 101 and 102 the entire long weekend, and it took us 10 hours to make it back to Madison. But dinner was fantastic, family was all around, and my Mom took the kids so that we could sleep in a few times. And, we have much to be thankful for this year. I hope everyone had as good a holiday as we did.