On Thanksgiving morning, Thursday November 24th, Joann and Max flew to San Jose to visit family. We arrived around noon, rented a car, and headed north on 101 to Max's mom's house in San Carlos. We then drove with Cathy, Roger, mom/Wendy, Kyle and Ryan to San Francisco, where we watched the Cirque Du Soleil show Corteo. We had fantastic seats, and we all enjoyed the show.
After the show, we drove back to Wendy's/mom's house and ate pizza. The plan was to have our official Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. After dinner, Joann and Max headed to the same hotel where Roger and Cathy were staying. We had a two-bedroom hotel room that was really nice, except that the walls were thin and we could hear conversations in the adjacent rooms.
On Friday morning, Roger and Max went running for an hour in Edgewood park. Roger had been training for the California International Marathon, and Max had been training for a couple weeks in anticipation of running with Roger. The run was great, and they agreed to go out again on Saturday morning if there was time.
On Friday afternoon, we all hung out at Wendy's/mom's house talking, playing poker and preparing dinner. Around five o'clock we sat down for our feast: we had rice-stuffed squash, lasagna, green beans, mashed potatoes and salad. For dessert we had two kinds of pie and ice cream. After dinner we sat around the table and tried to solve some puzzles that mom/Wendy had from a previous party. Max lost some sleep trying to figure out what the next letter in the following sequence was: "w,i,t,n,-".
On Saturday morning, Max and Roger went for another run in Edgewood park, this time doing a lot more hills and going for 80 minutes. Both of them had a great time. After Max showered, he and Joann drove to Berkeley to meet Joann's parents Ed and Karen. After having lunch at Cafe Intermezzo on Telegraph, the four of us did some shopping and then walked around campus for a bit. We then went to Hs. Lordships at the Berkeley marina for dinner, which was fun because Max and Joann used to go there for special occasions when they were in college. After dinner Max and Joann headed to their hotel near the Oakland airport and returned the rental car. On Sunday morning they flew back to Seattle.