2 more bullet points

• Delightful Thanksgiving visit with Danielle and Michael and one of the cutest two-year-olds ever.

Brendan had Thanksgiving with his fiancee’s cousin’s wife’s mother’s husband’s parents and their extended family. We played obstacle football with a regular ol’ half-brother and an aunt’s boyfriend’s children. If we pretend that fiancee-hood and boyfriend-hood can be the same as in-lawness, that would make those kids Brendan’s step cousins in-law^3. Or, as Wes would say, his shirttail cousins.
We had deliciousness and played dominoes at the Thanksgiving feast. We watched the Seahawks get creamed by the Dallas Cowboys (we were in Dallas, so groans would have been ill-advised).
The next two days were spent enjoying the pleasant company of Dani and Michael and Andrew and Kalab, and the last night produced these delights:

Stina is thinking about writing a story titled The Boy in the Clock.

• Recovered dedication! Ride from Dallas to Houston with construction worker who was very hesitant at first, asked us if we had any weapons, specified that I (Stina) sit in front, but by the time we got to Houston was showing us pictures of his family.

After being dropped off Sunday morning by Danielle and Michael at a nice south-of-Dallas freeway exit, the blustery wind suddenly began to cut right to the bone. We decided to trudge to the next exit which we could see was in a bit of a valley and near a gas station so we could get out of the wind. We had sudden worries of Chicago hhiking. We trudged the mile or so and discovered two dogs very eager to become our friends at the gas station. Just as we were kneeling down to play with them, a Dodge Ram pulled up and rolled down his window. We hadn't even stuck our thumbs out yet, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but Vincent asked if we had any weapons, asked where we were going, and told us that Stina had to be the one to sit up front (I imagine he was worried Brendan would grab the steering wheel from him and run off with it). Once we were settled in and didn’t try to kill him, he told us that he had seen us walking as he had gone to get gas and had prayed over whether to pick us up or not. He told us God must be with us ‘cause he doesn’t usually pick people up.