We traveled quite a bit this month, to Silicon Valley and back, and to Memphis to see the Tennessee gang. Kawena was a good traveler, but he seems to have reacted to the disruption by being more clingy and easily upset. He gets upset when we go out of his range of vision, even if it is only a few feet away. But he continues to make progress in sitting, rolling, pulling himself up to standing. And at Grandma Kathy’s house, he even stood on his own for a full second before tumbling down!

San Jose was nice, good restaurants but a bit boring. You could see the effects of the building boom a few years ago with the high-tech bubble. Light rail connected everything, and hotels were high class but business oriented. Kawena stayed with Dad while Mom went to a conference on Intranets and information management. Wena loves to explore and his crawling has really taken off. He crawls some on his hands and knees, but since he wants to stand so badly, he often crawls on his hands and feet; little legs stiff and straight as if he was walking. We saw Brian for a milisecond before he flew off to Boston and we had take-out chinese food with Uncle David on our last rainy night in San Francisco. The last day we dropped in to see Great Grandpa Joe in Pleasant Hill and looked at old crinkled pictures and walked in the overgrown yard.

Uncle Nick came with us this time to Tennessee, and stayed with Tarn while we stayed with Grandma Kathy in her big clean new house. When we first arrived, we went to Tarn’s house. When he came out in overalls and a floppy black wool hat, something must have alarmed Kawena, because he took one look at silly Tarn and burst into tears! He calmed down, and crawled around on the floor with straight legs, inspecting the checkerboard floor.

We set up a fancy Thanksgiving dinner in Grandma Kathy’s dining room, kitchen and sunroom, with silverware and tablecloths and wine glasses. Leslie and Rachel came over before we even woke up and started warming everything Leslie had been preparing the whole day before: potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli with cheese, honey baked ham, ambrosia, fresh rolls, sweet iced tea, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. Tarn and Nick came over at the last moment, bearing two big deep fried turkeys – delicious! Carrie and her two girls came over, and Randy and Ken, trailed by a neighbor boy (Parker?) who was polite and hungry. We feasted like the King, in Memphis.