Highlights from Thanksgiving Weekend

3 knocks to my 2 1/2 year old niece's noggin: and nearly a fourth when she almost jumped on top of sleeping Swee'pea ten minutes after he'd fallen asleep (after an hour of coaxing by both parents). The poor girl had a swelling just above her nose from the toy box lid slamming down, which made her look like a cro magnon girl, and a matching enormous goose egg on the back of her head from leaning back in her chair just a little too far and meeting the floor way too quickly. The third was not as serious. Luckily no symptoms of concussion, so no Saturday night of a holiday weekend trip to emerg.

1 power outage: for two hours on Saturday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 pm; luckily my parents just had a gas stove put in several months ago; perfectly clear evening, no wind, rain, sleet, snow or other discernible reason for the outage.

3 fingers burnt trying to pick up candle lantern by the wire at the top instead of the base: note to self: heat rises.

1 all you can eat brunch buffet: complete with waffles and blueberry sauce, omelettes, homefries and an order of restauranteur's apostrophe (details to follow).

1 turkey dinner: minus one greek salad forgotten in the fridge

1 conversation about all the people who have died in the past year: including a discussion of my 23-year-old cousin, whose funeral was on Saturday, and her stunned parents.

3 walks in gorgeous fall sunshine surrounded by rustling fall, falling and fallen colours and sweet whiffs of leaf mould

2 pumpkin desserts:the classic pumpkin pie and newfangled pumpkin cheesecake squares, both courtesy of With the Grain, a fantastic whole grain, organic, make-every-delicious-thing-they-sell-from-scratch-and-onsite bakery in Guelph. Why don't they make pumpkin desserts year round? Tim Horton's pumpkin donut is another October treat that should be available ALL THE TIME.

2 times Swee'pea's Grandpa checked on his curing black walnuts by the light of the nearly full moon: I think he's going a bit funny in his retirement. He also talked about burying a bull's horn by his grapevines next summer to protect them from pests.

4 Dirty jokes about Grandpa's walnuts: I won't go into the details: this isn't that kind of blog.

1 strange apres diner scene with brother-in-law: details to follow.

52 pages read of the new Jilly Cooper novel, Wicked! A Tale of Two Schools, not to be confused with Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

29,418 steps logged by Sugar Daddy for a fundraising challenge at his work: mostly by walking Swee'pea back and forth to sleep.

19 times Swee'pea pulled out the neck of my shirt and peered into the Deep Valley, as if to reassure himself that the Twin Peaks are still there: 19, including once when he puked into the Deep Valley. Nice.

Moments to be thankful for: innumerable.