I hope all of you in the States had an opportunity to spend some of Thanksgiving day with family or friends.  We traveled down to the farm where my Mom grew up  and spent some time with family over a wonderful meal.

Lots of talking, lots of laughing, lots of eating.

Perfect.

While there we took my brother, who hasn’t been back on the farm in many years, on a quick tour of the barns where we all used to play.

It was very cold.  Especially for my brother’s girlfriend who is from El Salvador.

We noticed little things while exploring the barns, like what my uncle used to call a patented barn door handle…

…and a clamp in my Grandfather’s shop…

…with a view of the old farmhouse through the shop window.

While we were wandering among the barns huge flocks of sand hill cranes flew screeching overhead.  There were at least 3 groups of them, each as large or larger than this group:

This is not a great shot, I took it blindly up into the sky without being able to see what I caught, then cropped the heck out of it so that you could see something of what we saw.  It was so cool.

Barns, birds, family…

…you can’t get much better than that.

And to top it off there was pie.   Happy sigh.