Hey everybody. Although belated, I thought I'd give a quick recap of the Thanksgiving weekend.

Both the flight in and the flight out were pretty uneventful. Besides a little turbulence, the integrity of the flight was never in question. haha

Before we boarded the flight in Austin, we made sure to profile everyone on the flight per the characters on "Lost." There was a rich brother and sister combo. We found the Hurley type guy. I'm virtually positive there was a doctor on the plane, as evidenced by his carry-on bag being covered with advertisements for new medicines from Pfizer. We even found a Michael-Walt combo, only instead it was a mother and son.

Anywho...As I said, the flights were uneventful. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that I got searched at the airport. All because I had an expired driver's license. I fully understand why there is an extensive security process, yet when it happened, I felt so pissed off at the process. I know that they're just doing their jobs to make the flights that leave their airport safer, yet when it happens, you really do feel like every person in the airport is looking right at you.

I had a great time in Virginia. I hate ranking such things, but I do know that last week's Thanksgiving was one of the best I've ever had. The best Thanksgivings I've had had less to do with the food being consumed, and more to do with the company consuming it.

Usually, my family does a lot of eating when it gets together. Yet I don't seem to recall there being as much idle snacking as there usually is. I'd say that's probably a good thing.

One of the concepts I learned about in Sociology is the concept of "Master Status." A person's master status is how others view them. For me, George W. Bush, he is a president, so that's the master status I assign to him. But if you were to ask his daughters or his mother, they might see him as a father or son first, and a president second. I bring this up because I find it interesting that in my ways, I often times view my sisters more as parents to their children, than as siblings. I think that has more to do with the nature of family gatherings, and how infrequently they happen. When we do get together, it's usually with all the families assembled in one place.

So it was kind of nice to have Mom offer to pay for a night out in Alexandria, Virginia for all of her kids and sign. others. It gave us a chance to do a little more catching up than we might have been able to with toddlers running around.

Thanksgiving meal was delicious. Everyone brought their talents to the table (pun intended) and helped ensure that Turkey Day was pretty tasty. Robert made the turkey, sweet taters, gravy, and rolls. Katie and Dan made the green bean casserole. Anya made a delicious salad. My mom made some delicious mashed potatoes. Ocean Spray even chipped in with a can of cranberry sauce. My talents were put to the post-dinner dish washing.

We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade earlier that morning. I must say that I could really do without all of that singing and dancing. I'd really enjoy the parade a lot more if they would just show the paraders marching down the street. I like parades that are heavier on the bands and floats, and lighter (no pun intended on that first one) on the Tommy Tunes and cast ensemble performances of "Wicked."

We also used the week to celebrate J's birthday. She had a really cool Star Wars cake (made from scratch by my sister), complete with red lava icing and duelling Anakin and Obi Wan on top. She came away with some pretty nifty gifts as well, her first cd player being one of them. The first cd player/first cd is a pretty cool event. I remember getting my first records and stereo type stuff when I was a kid.

I had a blast playing with my nieces and nephew. They're all at really interesting ages and prefer different playing styles, so that was a fun challenge worth taking. Where one niece likes to recreate scenes from Star Wars, the other one likes playing Yankee Doodle on Uncle Matt's lap. Where the nephew likes running around the house in his own imaginative state, he also enjoys a good climb up Mt. Matthew.

I have also discovered my nieces and nephew's favorite words. The oldest, JMG's favorite words are, "Remember that scene in Star Wars where...". JAG's favorite words aren't so much words as they are sounds of explosions. C's favorite words are "do it again."

While Anya and I were in DC, we also had the chance to go check out some of the sites downtown. We ate at a tasty Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan first. We follwed that up with a nice little walk to the Metro station, followed by a nice little walk through the Washington Mall area. We went from our Metro stop to the Capitol building, back down to the Washington Monument, then down to the Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and then back up to the Smithsonian metro stop. All told, we think we did about 5-7 miles worth of walking all day long. It was well worth it though.

I had a great week. I was definitely sad to see it go. But luckily, I took a considerable number of photographs to remember the week.

matt out