Thanksgiving came with a story this year. We were to spend Thanksgiving with Beth's family in Kalamazoo, at the Wiessner's house, and Beth was sure that we were going to need to spend the night because the family gathering would go on until pretty late. So anyway, Thursday we loaded up all those pies and desserts and headed up there, and we had a very nice Thanksgiving meal with the whole family. But things were pretty well breaking up and people were leaving by around 8, which meant that we could have been home by around 10, and didn't need to stay in the hotel at all. Then, as happened last summer, the hotel reservation made online did not secure us a room that was large enough for all of us. No roll-aways, fire codes you know. So someone could sleep on the floor, or....we got another room (they let us have one for $50, though, so it could have been worse). So now we're paying another $50 to get another room that we didn't need in the first place. Wait, there's more. We didn't have much to do the second day, since nobody we know was around, so we dropped off a couple orders of Beth's soup (which was almost enough to pay for the hotel) driving out to Lawton and back, then headed home in the early afternoon. We spent the rest of the day at home, until bedtime when the kids were getting ready for bed and Alex asked "where is the bag that had our toothbrushes and retainers and things in it?" Well guess what. It was back at the hotel. It also had Beth's bite guard in it and all her medications so altogether that bag held about a thousand bucks worth of stuff that we needed back. So at around 10 I'm headed back up to Kalamazoo alone to get it. When I got to the hotel it took them around half an hour to find the bag that the maid had turned in that morning. So anyway I finally get back after 2 am and get to bed. About 2 hours later Natalie is in our room to tell us that she's been throwing up in the bathroom downstairs, and she didn't make it all the way in for the first heave. So the bathroom was a mess. Beth was having stomach cramps too. Our best guess: it seems one of the desserts Beth made for Thanksgiving was a sort of pumpkin mousse, which had cream in it, and only a couple of the 8 she made were eaten. So we took them home, but since we had no refrigeration they were just in a cooler (with no ice or anything) for over a day in the back of the van. When we got home, Natalie ate one, and Beth ate one. Nobody else did, nobody else had stomach issues. We figure the pumpkin dessert had turned. So Saturday and the rest of the weekend was pretty low key.

Veterans’ Day seemed a big thing this year. I’d been asked a few weeks ago to do a presentation for a bunch of home-school kids about being a veteran, what it was like serving in the navy, etc and Friday was the day. I brought in the same PowerPoint presentation I put together like 3 years ago when I did the same talk for 5th graders at Lincoln, and last year for 3rd graders (I think?). There were some technical difficulties (I wanted to put the presentation on the big screen but nobody could figure it out, so I wound up plugging the laptop into a TV in one of the Sunday school rooms and cramming all the kids in there. The talk could be only a few minutes long but the kids have a million questions (why is that ship called a destroyer? Was there ever a submarine under your ship? Did you ever shoot a missile?) and like the cool pictures a lot. There were a couple other veterans there doing the same thing right before me, but I was the only one with pictures. Later Friday, Luke came over to our house for a sleepover with Alex, while at the same time, Missy was over at the Rahn’s for a sleepover with Abby. The girls had also made plans to get together with some other friends (like 6 or 7 girls altogether) and go see “Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them,” and we were chauffeurs for that. The girls all sat together and Beth and I and a couple other parents sat a couple rows back. Alex and Luke chose to stay at home instead so they were home alone while everyone else saw the movie. Saturday was mostly about the leaves. Every year, the leaves on all the oak trees in the backyard stay on the trees until it completely sucks to clean them up. This past week was unusually warm for mid-November, even as late as Friday it was 75 degrees. Then the weather turned, and it got good and cold awfully fast. When I got up Saturday, it was snowing. And this was the weekend that the leaves were finally mostly down, and I had the time. Anyway, I went to the new tool rental place in town (since the one I’d used for the past few years has closed) and fortunately they had one of those mondo walk-behind leaf blowers as well so I rented it for the rest of the morning. There are times I hate the fence that runs through our backyard, mostly when I’m trying to clear leaves…it only took an hour or two to blow the entire backyard clear but then the gigantic piles were all along the fence and too big to get through the gate, so I returned the blower (which, by the way, is not easy to get into the back of a truck by yourself) and switched to the rake and tarp method. Luckily I have 3 teen/tweens to help out, with varying degrees of grudging, and we were able to get everything hauled to the overgrown area by the ditch in another couple hours, in a snow flurry that made the pile of leaves get wetter, colder, heavier, harder to move, and muddier by the minute. But, it’s done, and I love that. Beth made soup the rest of Saturday, and I put strings of light up on the big spruce tree in our front yard. It is a very tall tree nowadays, and I had to use two joined 10’ PVC pipes with another 3’ length taped onto it to get the end of the first string of lights to the top. Not. Very. Easy. But I did eventually get to stay up there, and used up 6 strings of lights before getting halfway down. I had to run to Menard’s to get more lights. By the end I probably had about 200’ of lights strung together, which was too much and the fuses in the strings blew. Twice. I’m going to have to separate the strings or these lights will not stay lit.

Friday I went to a dermatologist in Fort Wayne because I've been concerned about some moles and other skin things. I had a real rash of them (pun intended) after Labor Day when I got sunburned on my chest. Might have been coincidence, but a bunch of moles appeared or got bigger after that all across my chest. The family doctor was concerned about a couple spots so he sent me to a specialist, but in the month it took to see him, most got smaller and a big new one appeared on my temple. Anyway, the dermatologist said they were nothing to be concerned about, but the one on my temple was big and scaly and itchy so I had him remove it. Took a couple minutes. Anyway, all seems fine. Later that same day I registered for the Veteran's Half Marathon (since the weather forecast was looking pretty good, although things have taken a turn for the colder recently...it was 70 degrees Thursday but was predicted to be maybe as high as 40 for Saturday). I successfully ran it for the third consecutive year, although I wasn't sure the whole way that I would. Before the first mile was past, my hamstring tightened up, and never let loose. For over 12 miles I was thinking it was sure to loosen up any time now, but it never did. On a regular day I would never have kept running that far. And today it is very sore. However, I only stopped running long enough to drink some Gatorade along the way a couple times because I knew if I started walking I wouldn't be able to start running again. And my time was 2:07, only a couple minutes slower than last year.

The Veterans' program was this past week at church; SOS set up a very nice dinner for veteran church members and we had entertainment (a song service) by a local musical family. Very nice time, although Missy was too sick to attend, so Beth stayed home with her while Alex and Natalie helped out. They also presented all the verterans with nice embroidered and hand-painted sweatshirts. Today we took the kids to see "Doctor Strange." Funny to see Benedict Cumberbatch speaking with an American accent; Beth and I have been watching "Sherlock" on Netflix lately. Anyway, cool movie. veryone liked it a lot, especially the kids. And we saw previews for the new Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Pirates of the Caribbean movies...cool!