Back from Thanksgiving in New England

This year, I must give thanks for MJP. He traveled with me over 12 hours up and down the east coast, driving most of the way, so that I could share savory foods with my brother's nuclear family unit and some of his in-laws.

While my nephews, Thing 1 and Thing 2, are getting a bit too old to be the source of many cute kid stories, they were charming as ever. Thing 1, whose age just crossed into the double digits, can be a little saucy. Here's Thing 2's version of Jingle Bells:

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in an almost open sleigh!

As he might put it, "I'm only six-years old." He is so tall that he feels the need to throw the "only" in there right off the bat.

I only have a few regrets about this trip. First of all, based on my hunch that no one in my brother's family likes pecan pie very much, I should have kept mine at home. (I can see it now, moldering untouched in my brother's distant refrigerator, being slowly shoved to the back until at last it gets scraped into a garbage disposal. Sniff.) I should not have packed my fancy boots. Last, but not least, I should never by a personal well-being product while on a day trip to a city I rarely visit.