I know, it's almost Christmas.

But I am continuing to stay too busy to post regularly and I flew right by our Thanksgiving visit with my family. My younger son was visiting his brother and the girls were at their mother's house this year. My fiancé and I drove down to Georgia so he could meet some of my family, including my mother. We had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner Thursday and then a crab boil on Friday.

My sister and brother-in-law brought a few dozen fresh blue crabs from Savannah to make one of my favorite meals. I personally packed away five of these babies.

After dinner, we started decorating for "An Affair to Dismember," a murder mystery party set in a Transylvanian castle. My youngest brother took a moment to canoodle with his new girlfriend. I'm not sure where he dug her up.

We try to stay in theme for the party drinks, so I redecorated a bottle of 19 Crimes in honor of my fiancé's character.

I've found my match in willingness to go all out for a costume. He even grew out his beard and tolerated Santa jokes from co-workers just to be able to dye and sculpt it into suitably sleazy facial hair for his character, Asthmadeus, the Prince of Dimness (the asthmatic, not-very-smart younger brother of the Prince of Darkness).

I played Aretha Garlique, the flamboyant clairvoyant who is feared by the undead. I had fun putting my costume together and even found a great corset-style bustier. And see the prince's jacket? That was an Ireland thrift shop find - it's a suit jacket turned inside out to show its red satin lining. I sewed matching red satin stripes down the sides of the suit's pant legs. We always decorate for the parties so my mother's window-lined living room was covered in castle stone-decorated paper.

We also had Balihi, the show-tune loving Rogersandhammerstein monster, Dr Angela Deth played by a stand-in for the family friend who bailed at the last minute, the murder victim's fiancée Lizzie Bordeaux, the Mummy of King Aldrinktotat, the kosher cannibal Hannibel Shecter, and Glumda the Wicked Witch of DePressed. Like all these murder mysteries, the plot gets more twisted as you go. It turned out that I had traded bodies with the presumed murder victim and it was actually Aretha who'd been killed.

On Saturday, we'd decided to drive to Hilton Head. I told my mother we were going to the beach and she told me to send a picture of me in a bathing suit to prove it. The water was too chilly to swim in, but it was a gorgeous, warm day. In fact, it didn't seem right to be in swimsuits at the end of November.

Not that we were complaining. Any sunny day at the beach is fine by me!

We went back down to the beach Sunday morning after breakfast to get one last walk by the ocean in before we left.

And then couldn't bring ourselves to leave. On our way off the island, we stopped at a bar for a couple of pints on the deck by the water. I think I'm storing up the sunshine to get me through the winter.