Auntie Tracy, come play Legos with me!!!

I'm thankful that

1) we did not spend this Thanksgiving in a Cracker Barrel like last year,

2) we were able to go to Alabama for a good southern, family-filled Thanksgiving with fried okra and pickled squash, which is Thanksgiving the way God intended, and

3) that my nephew Jack thinks I'm awesome; or at least mostly awesome since I heard "AUNTIE TRACY, COME PLAY WITH ME!!!" about one hundred times over the course of four days.

Fortunately, he's very easy to play with. He plays; I sit and occasionally when prompted interact. This is us playing...

My brother built a mammoth Lego display in the garage so when we were at his house, Legos were the main event. At one point, a Lego man got run over by an excavator or some other construction vehicle. It was gruesome so Mark spent one afternoon assembling a Lego hospital.

My brother also has two large pecan trees in his front yard, and by association, a million pecans. My dad collected a giant box full to keep for the winter {he's part squirrel} so Mark and I cracked a few open and partook in their yummy goodness {according to Mark, the word "pecan" is an Indian word that means a nut that must be cracked with a rock. We are never short on nuggets of knowledge here in the Pollock household. It wouldn't be fair not to share}.

And this was all I could squeeze into my luggage on the way home. Have I mentioned that the closest Trader Joe's is in Santa Fe, New Mexico?

If they sold spaghetti sauce in 3 ounce containers there would be one thousand of those in this picture as well. But never fear, my plan for Christmas is to take an extra suitcase filled with bubble wrap that will make it's way back to Denver with lots of three cheese spaghetti goodness. And possibly a cooler, filled with liquid nitrogen and numerous boxes of mac n cheese.

And a note of thanks {this is a Thanksgiving post after all}:

One morning while I was at the RFKC over the summer, I was up before almost everyone else sitting in a the main lobby, looking out the window in a ridiculously tired fog. Dennis, an older guy who was always up at dawn, started talking to me and said he was wondering if I had been sitting there thinking about my family. I probably was - I was a bit homesick around that time. Then he said something I will never forget. He said "You must have a really great family to miss them so much". It's such a simple thought but I haven't been able to shake it from my head. So this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for much, but most of all for such a great family.

And okra. I'm definitely thankful for fried okra.

And sunshine.

And I had "Soft Kitty" stuck in my head on the entire flight from Nashville to Denver, which I'm not necessarily thankful for but it was better than a lot other possible songs... so I guess I'm thankful for that too.