Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving. This morning we started the day at thirteen degrees below zero! This is pretty surprising for us Texans, we are not used to this.

For the holiday meal we went to Aunt Sharon’s and Uncle Leo’s. Got to see Jeremy and his family, Sara and her family and had a lot of fun. Paul joined us. The girls had a lot of fun playing with their cousin Olivia, and with the Richardsons’ cats.

We went back to dad’s after the meal and spent the evening there. Then tonight, for the first time in many years, I actually got a chance to go to the annual (twenty third annual, in fact) Thanksgiving Night dinner at Nick Tahou’s in Rochester!

I used to go every year, long ago. Our Nick Tahou’s Thanksgiving Tradition even predates SGL, and that is really something! We have been going ever since Joe and I were in college together at Robert’s Wesleyan back in the 1990s.

All five of us went since the kids have never managed to make it to Nick Tahou’s for this. This is especially cool to get to bring them and have them meet everyone. Paul drove and Dominica came along as well. We had called Nate ahead of time to make sure that no one would be showing up that should not be there given things that have been found out this past year. But we were safe, they would not be there.

Nearly all the old guard was there. Jeff, Joe, Nate and his family. We spent the whole time catching up, it has been forever since we were all together. And this past year has given us a lot to be catching up on.

Wednesday. At dad’s today after being gone all day yesterday in Big Flats working there. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so today is super slow at work.

After work we all played Clue for the first time. The girls have never played it, in fact they have played very few board games, it just isn’t a thing that we do all that much – mostly because most board games aren’t really games and are just a silly way to randomize events. But Clue is a real game with actual strategy and skill involved and a lot more fun than normal board games. We had a really fun time teaching them how to play. Liesl played on her own and Luciana played on a team with me.

It was super cold here today. As low as a negative seven Fahrenheit during the day and ten below at night.

Today is our first full day in New York, time for some rest. We spent the day at the house hanging out and I was basically not on line all day. Things are slow given the holiday week so I was able to avoid the office for the most part.

We started the day in Michigan with a view of Ontario, Canada across the river. We got up and checked out of the hotel. The girls thought that the hotel was a lot of fun because it had big open banquet spaces that were not in use and they were able to run around them like little maniacs and blow off some steam that collects when kids ride in the car for days. They enjoyed the views and the space. And I enjoyed getting my Hilton Honors points, of course.

We got on the road right away and crossed into Canada, this is, I believe, only the second time that the girls have been to Canada. We really do not go very often.

We made good time across the Ontario Peninsula. In fact, we decided to wait until we were in London before we bothered to stop at a Tim Horton’s to get coffee and breakfast. We love getting authentic Canadian Tim Horton’s rather than the imitation American stuff. Everyone loved the food and the adults all enjoyed their delicious Canadian coffee. The girls really liked the food. Liesl, our soup lover, really liked their soup there.

The weather was great for a warm, bright drive through Canada. We made good time and got to Niagara Falls while the day was still young. Paul really wanted to do some stuff there as he has never been before. But it was packed with tourists and was going to be very expensive and time consuming to do anything, so after driving around for a while trying to come up with things to do we eventually gave up on all of it.

By late afternoon we got to dad’s house and we visited and did dinner. That was around five that we ate.

I took some time to set up my laptop and get to work to catch up on everything since I had been in the car so much, obviously there was a lot for me to be doing. This was around six thirty.

Tomorrow I am going to be out of the office all day as Paul and I are heading down to Big Flats to work for the entire day. No rest for us. So I needed to get to bed early so that I could get some sleep. It’s been an exhausting week and tomorrow is going to be long.

This morning we hung out with Paul’s dad and one of his friends for a while, and talked shop for a while. Then it was time to get on the road.

We drove all of the way across Wisconsin today to head to the Upper Peninsula. This is all new territory for me. It’s neat to see so much more of the country.

It was a super long day. It was already super late when we crossed down into the Lower Peninsula and headed past places I’ve not seen since I was in college, like Frankenmuth.

It was so late that we gave up on making it to New York tonight. We ended up getting a hotel right before the bridge to the Canada on the US side from Sarnia.

At least tomorrow will be a really easy drive.