I am thankful for the day I'm sure will come where we visit with family and nobody is sick.

I made the mistake of telling Eleanor that her Grandma and Grandpa were coming to visit, and because we are allergic to family, she promptly got sick the day before they arrived. So there was a lot of this

and this

and this

but also some of this

and this

and this

and this.

Fall! Leaves! Throwing and crunching! It's just, it's the best. Also the best? Costco pumpkin pie.

I don't even like pumpkin pie. But I was pleasantly surprised, both by the girth and the deliciousness. You can't tell because Joel has huge hands, but that is actually an enormous pie. We had it after dinner the day we bought it, then Jake and Joel had it for breakfast the next morning, then the Kruegers served it to some guests they had over while we went to a movie, and then we finished it off after our Thanksgiving duck.

DUCK. Cheaper than buying a turkey for four and a half people, and a thousand times more delicious. Eleanor was starting to pull out of her fever by Duck Day and she ate way more than her fair share. I was just so glad she was eating that I didn't care (I cared the next day when I was trying to make Duck Skillet and all I had left were meagre shards).

Eleanor is relentless about books these days, so if you come visit, she will make you read books to her until you make her stop. Grandma and Grandpa have all her books memorized by now, they read them to her so often, and when they left she looked over at me and sort of huffed, and then sat down by a pile to read to herself. She knows I'm a lost cause.