Happy post-Thanksgiving

Generic fall picture for color.

Happy post-Thanksgiving! May you have had a delicious holiday meal (if you're an American; may the rest of you had good food anyway) and good savings if you decided to shop.

And most importantly of all, may you have managed to avoid family arguments.

I managed to pick up more family stories over my holiday. This is always delightful, especially since as an adult I now know my mother was quite the mischief maker in her youth... things that were never revealed to me as a kid but have come out over the years.

I learned about my recently buried uncle, whom I'd never known had wanted to be a "mountain man" in his youth. One of the best people I've ever known, kind of heart and strong of spirit, adventurous but with a strong sense of home.

I learned that my own name was an old family spelling... which my mother had not (consciously) known when she named me!

I watched my parents and aunt and relatives solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery in half the time me, my husband, and my brother solved it. They have sharp deduction senses, and also picked up on clues we'd have never noticed... though I think our exchanged looks and suppressed laughter every time we remembered some rabbit hole we'd gone down didn't help. (In our defense, we did do much better on the second mystery, knowing how the system worked.)

And I met cousins I hadn't met before, spent time with relatives I rarely get to see, barely missed others I haven't seen in a while, and enjoyed way too much pie.

So it was a very good holiday for me.