Sophie spent the day with us on Wednesday. When Sophie comes to visit, we always get a lot of yard work done-- cheap labor! Any other child would dread coming to our house, but Sophie seems to enjoy working in the yard. We got so much accomplished-- cleaned the gutters, raked the yard, cleaned out the pond, removed dead plants from the gardens, replaced some rocks around the pond, and burned most of the fallen tree limbs that were lying around the back yard. Sophie really enjoyed the fire pit and burned just about anything she could find that was "burnable". Once again, we enjoyed some veggie soup and a good bottle of wine on the patio by the fire. We even broke out the Ipod and introduced Soph to the soundtrack of "Wicked". She enjoyed playing the role of the Witch as she "flew" around the yard on her broomstick! Awesome day!

Thursday was Thanksgiving at Mom's house. I wish I had taken more pictures, but trust me that the food was incredible and it was great to see the faces of all of my relatives and give thanks for the many blessings that we all are lucky enough to enjoy.

Black Friday~~~ For those of you that are long time readers of this Blog, you know that Black Friday is the highlight of my year. I always enjoy searching the websites and going through the sales ads on Thanksgiving to map out my best course of action for the biggest sale of the year. Normally I am standing in line at some shopping center by 3am on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Normally I am unloading a carload of items into the house by 9am. This year was different. I looked through the ads but didn't see anything that caught my eye. Last year was the year of big screen TVs--- I don't need any more TVs-- there are TVs in this house that I haven't turned on more than twice this year! I would like to get a larger TV for the living room, but the sales weren't great this year and it just wasn't in the budget. Maybe next year.

Yesterday we held my brother Jim's belated 40th birthday party. His birthday is really on November 7th, but it didn't make sense for him to come down that weekend and then return for Thanksgiving. Mom decided to do both occasions this weekend-- Thursday at her house and Saturday at the Biscuit. This was the first event held at the Biscuit's new event space- a trial run to see if it worked for private parties. I think it worked out fine. All of our relatives were there, and several of Jim's co-workers and our childhood friends.

It's been a great past few days, but I have to admit that I am pretty anxious to get back to work and into a normal routine again tomorrow!

P.S. To Adam R~~ if you are reading this, just want to say thanks for the great comment that you left on my March 2007 posting "Progress". I appreciate the accolades!