Picture-perfect holiday

The big holiday for my family has become Thanksgiving. My sis and I take pains to make sure we're off the day -- which usually include working Christmas Day. It's become a tradition to have a big dinner at Lorrie's house, which includes lots of food and laughter. This year, the tradition was extended to a weeklong whirlwind trip with car and plane travel, a special and long-awaited reunion, football, food, hockey, ice skating, shopping and again lots of laughs. Lots to be thankful for, to be sure.

A thousand words couldn't take the place of these individual moments. But I usually save the bulk of the actual pictures for another tradition, the family calendar. Although I'm not there to see it, I love hearing about everyone perusing it and enjoying the serious photos as well as the funny ones. And it's something that keeps on giving for a whole year -- well at least for my mom and myself, since we're the ones who use them.

Anyway back to the trip. It started in New York. Right after a hard night's work, I hopped the subway to JFK to catch a plane to Richmond. The plan -- and it worked to perfection -- was to meet Clapton buddy Susan in Savannah on Friday night, see my long-lost Little Sister Jessica on Saturday, go to my first USF home game on Sunday and then make our way to the other side of the state so Mark could finally meet the rest of the family.

We motored on down, sampling pecan rolls along the way and making a pitstop at South of the Border. As anyone who ever took the long summer car trips between the North and Florida knows, the Border billboard signs start out dozens of miles before the stop and grow more voluminous as you get near. There were a few less this year, and even fewer people at the stop. The employees outnumbered the customers. Talk about out of season!

We had arranged to meet Susan at Sam Snead's restaurant in Savannah. The late legendary golfer put together a nice shrine with a sharp menu. Even on an upset stomach, I couldn't help trying to pack away the prime rib special. And yes, for those in the know, Susan did spill her water! It's so endearing ... and wet!

The next day, Park ventured onward to Florida, arranging to meet Jessica -- I was a Big Sister to her Little Sister many MANY moons ago while on the West Coast of Florida. In fact, the age she is now is the age I was when we first met. Yikes! When I saw her striding around the corner, I started hopping up and down. Lots of squealing, lots of hugging and borderline tears. Mark (and the valets) were eating it up. Speaking of eating, more good grub!

Jess looked stupendously fabulous and we just talked and laughed. Which of course led Mark to wonder how we could have been apart so long if we're so in sync. My answer was that I just expected to see her again someday, to have these kind of moments again. She needed here time and space to become her own person. Guess what her own person is? A journalism major at the University of South Florida! Great choice, I say! Except her minor is Theater and mine was Dance. Black sheep!!

The next day we went to the Big Top Flea Market. Every time we thought we were done, another row or extension we hadn't been down popped up. Found lots of cool things, including some rocking additions to the lighter collection (a submarine, a grenade, a laster, a frog and an Oreo). We went to one of my old haunts, Vinyl Fever (OK, it's in a new location) and then met Jess and b/f Darnell for yet even more good food at the Columbia Restaurant, which opened in Tampa in 1905.

Then on to Raymond James Stadium to see our USF Bulls. They had struggled in recent weeks, so it was great to see them get off to a fast start. Three quarters went by before anything else happened. Jess seemed to like my derisive chant to UConn "Compass! Compass!" since they ran side to side more than up and down the field.

Next day it was on to the homefront. Mark had met my sis, but not my mom nor my bro. We went to Mom's where both were waiting and it quickly dissolved into boys vs. girls. In other words, he fit right in. "Did you just call me 'ark?" he inquired of Mom at one point. Mom made one of my childhood favorites for dinner, veal parmigiana, and we scarfed that down. Inside with Mom, I missed most of the fun when Mark and Jeff went outside to try the cigar he had bought at the Columbia "just to try it."

The next day we went to a flea market in Boca Raton where the only thing we found was a compass lighter, blue to remind us of UConn. The most hilarious moment was when we were looking at one particular outfit with a longer shirt and a short-sleeve shirt under it. The woman kept changing the prices, and raising them, even though we were rapidly losing interest. "That's $32 ... no $42." I said "How about $52?" as we walked away. Not the right way to play it in this economy.

Wednesday was a day full of ice. In Florida, as 'ark likes to point out. We picked up my whirling dervish of a nephew, Shane, and took him ice skating. Even Mark was going to try it out. Shane and I zipped around the ice with his child bar, but they didn't have them for adults, so Mark mostly stood at the boards until a nice instructor showed him how to do a couple of basics. The boys wrapped up the morning by having a snowball fight with the snow that was piled outside the rink.

We met up with Sis and hubby Keith ... back to boys vs. girls ... and headed south NOT to Miami. Played games at Dave & Busters -- the funniest part was a trivia game that only gave prize tickets for the top three. When two more people joined us, they couldn't crack the top three. Completely shut out!

Speaking of that, the Devils had quite the shutout going on for most of their game against the Panthers later that night. But Florida scored twice in the final three minutes to tie up the game. Things got worst when Pinhead Salvador took a penalty for clearing a puck into the crowd, but that infraction was killed off and Johnny O. scored with less than a minute left to send us (and a sizable portion of the crowd in Sunrise) home happy.

Mark had to head back to Virginia on Thanksgiving Day (female co-workers wanted to shop Black Friday, of course!) but he left his cookies (literally!) behind. The Schectors and Benders had a great dinner with lots of laughs ... and extra salt. Mere hours later, me, Sis and Mom trudged off to the mall to start shopping. Yay, I got another rockin' Hendrix hoodie cheaply ... boo, the Lucky Brand watch I wanted wasn't on sale nor could we get either of the two salesladies we asked to part with the little sunburst guitar that was part of the display.

And then hours after that, I was on a plane and darn if I didn't just about fly over a week's worth of memories.