This year marked my third Thanksgiving since I moved to California, but the first one that I spent here. It worked out reasonably well, as I was able to drive to Camp Pendleton and pick up my cousin James, who got off work at 7:30 Thursday morning. We managed to get to Tracy by 2:30, just in time to sit down for a meal with my brother Tim and his family. Yasu made a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, potatoes, stuffing, veggies, rolls, and a Thanksgiving first for me, tri-tip, a California favorite (before moving out here, I’d never even heard of tri-tip). It was a simply fantastic meal. Too bad for Tim that he had to go work a twelve-hour swing shift after a meal like that. But then, James and I didn’t get naps, either. We took the boys down to the park for a while before coming back to watch movies and play games until bedtime. Friday we drove in to San Francisco to visit the zoo, where they had an area set up for ice skating. I took the boys out for their first time on the ice, which they all seemed to enjoy. It did, however, take us a while to finally coax Marco onto the ice. After a short thirty hours in Northern California, James and I hopped in the car so he could be back in time to get a few hours of sleep before going out bright and early Saturday morning to defend freedom. It was a nice holiday. And the year is almost over already. 2009, here we come…