Thanksgiving weekend (Wed. – Sun.) this year was a trip to New York. Many of my relatives still live in the area south of Buffalo and we haven’t been back to visit since 1997. We left early Wednesday and made the eight-hour drive with an extra stop at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park where we got some scenic drives in, saw a waterfall, heard a bald eagle, and then later saw one flying overhead.

Side note: We have National Park Passport Books, which we can get stamped at every National Park/Monument/Battlefield/Historic Site that we visit, thereby collecting the stamps and documenting our visits, so when we travel, I like to plan routes that allow us to hit some National Parks along the way and get stamps.

We got to New York about 4:30 pm and visited with my aunt, uncle, and cousin that night. Another aunt, uncle, and cousin came for Thanksgiving Dinner and my grandmother’s sister and her husband came to visit. I talked genealogy (among other things) and got some more names and dates for our family genealogy database. All these were on my father’s side of the family.

On Friday, we went to Niagara Falls and visited the Theodore Roosevelt Inauguration National Historic Site (another stamp for the Passport Book). In 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated while visiting the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo. Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at that site on Sept. 14th.

Friday evening we went to another uncle’s house (on my mother’s side) and had some more uncles, cousins, and their families come over for the evening. Saturday we went to visit my grandmother who’s in a nursing home. She didn’t know we were coming and was quite surprised. She hadn’t seen us in 10 years, which means Blaise was only an infant and Camber wasn’t born yet. And Alaric had gone from 3 years old to a 6’1″ 13-year-old. :-) More genealogy info from my mother’s side, too.

Saturday afternoon we visited the Kazoo Factory in Eden, NY (I used to live in Eden my first few years of life). This was the original maker of metal kazoos (the only remaining one in the U.S.) and is 100 years old this year. We got to tour the factory and the kids got to make their own kazoos using genuine parts and a cool metal press that assembles the pieces, crimps the metal, and all that.

After the Kazoo Company on Saturday, we went to church with my uncle for the very first time and headed back toward Indiana. I had a critical handbell rehearsal to make today here in Indy at NOON, so we got a few hours of driving in last night, stayed in a hotel near Cleveland long enough to get about 6 hours of sleep, and then back on the road at 6am this morning. We had about five hours of driving left, so that got me home in time to quickly unpack and get ready for a three-hour rehearsal.

Now that THAT’S done, I can relax the rest of the evening and sleep in tomorrow since I’m now working Monday evenings at the Reference Desk instead of Tuesdays. Sigh……

(and that’s why there haven’t been any posts in the last few days)