Let the Thanksgiving Tour begin!

We made it to the US last Friday, 23 hours after we left our house. I'm still not sure how a 9-hour plane trip + a 1.5-hour plane trip = 23 hours of travel, but it does. It could have been a bit shorter, but the Delta gate agent wanted to seat the four of us in four completely separate seats... which wouldn't have been a big problem for us, but might have been for the people seated next to our monst... uh, kids. Actually, on our second attempt, they pulled the same nonsense again, but we accepted because we were afraid if we refused, they wouldn't find seats for us on the last flight of the day. As it turned out, on that flight, there were enough people coming in late from a connecting flight that we had time to trade seats with other people. 

(In France, we tend to say, "It's an airplane, not a train," meaning that you need to arrive an hour or two early to board a flight. That doesn't appear to be the case in the US, where you can board a flight five minutes before take-off. Extremely surprising post-9/11, but there it is.) 

Frédéric thought he was clever, making me sit by Noah on the Atlanta-St Louis leg of the flight... but Noah pulled one over on him by sleeping the entire time, while Benjamin took over whining duty. 

We have spent our week visiting friends and family in St Louis and doing our annual shopping. 

Today we leave for Columbia, Missouri to visit my little brother and his family. Monday they and we will go to Bentonville, Arkansas, then Tulsa, then southern Oklahoma for Thanksgiving, the highlight of our trip every year.