"Sew, old one! Sew like the wind!"

Crunch week, no time to post. Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. We did.

My brother may regret frying that first turkey. It was hugely popular and may have to become a regular, and grossly expensive, addition to the meal.

The third generation is growing up like fast forward. Little girls are beautiful young women, the boys are heading towards, or topping, six feet, some of them can legally drive. Makes me wish my mom were still with us, so she could see them.

And Mr. Bubs, the beau of the ball again. The hub-bub made him clingy at first- he wouldn't even come to his Mimi, but after a while he warmed up and ran around outside, with K's fiancee as wrangler. "Good baby training" said Sissy to K's mom. "Anything we can do!" said K's mom. Bubs has inherited his Aunt Migg's fear of taxidermy: the big mounted deer head was as good as a baby gate at keeping him off the stairs.

Brother brought Rachel and Miggs brought Plum. Both were big hits and I think they had a good time. Plum brought a pecan pie. Rachel had baked an apple-cranberry with crumb topping, but forgot it. I think she was a little nervous, but she needn't have been.

Miggs presented her grandfather with his 80th birthday present, a beautiful hand-knitted afghan. She had an original false start that she passed on to me -acrylics shall not sully her hand- and began again with a baby alpaca that was so expensive that she had to wait for every payday to buy a new skein. Which is why his April b-day was being gifted in November. He was delighted: "This really took a lot of thought and work, Miggs." Which for him is like another man's standing ovation.

We were having a girly re-hash of the previous night's Project Runway, when my youngest brother said "That's it- we're critiquing the pies. Now, this pumpkin- I do not think that you challenged yourself very much with this. Next time, I want to see more creativity. And this chess pie- do you feel that you acheived your vision of it? Let's talk about your workmanship on this pecan- this crust can stand a lot of improvement."

Good times...