Blog forecast: Patchy, At best.

Malinda, Esmond, E.A., Michelle, Fletcher, Crawford, Natalie, Ari, Aiden and Addison arrive Wednesday and stay until Sunday.

All but three of them are sleeping here (we've rented the guest cottage across the street for the unmarried adult kids). The two little boys are on an inflatable queen-size bed in the loft, where my "office" used to be but now reminds me of the Hindenburg hangar.

Robert's sister and her brood can be quite a handful, and Robert (and I) have spent hundreds of hours over the last 10 or 12 weeks planning their every step and nibble. Executing the plan is likely to leave me not a huge amount of time to check in here, for which I apologize in advance.

Happy Thanksgiving.