All the travel headaches were worth it in the end.  I had a pleasant ten days visiting family, as these photos attest.  Featured characters in this little slideshow are my folks, my brother and his wife, my nephew and niece, paternal grandparents and maternal extended family.  The building project was a storage shed for my brother's yard.  And the background music?  One of my favorite cuts from Tom, my traveling buddy.  It's called "First Winter"; he plays both acoustic guitar and mandolin on it, and I believe he wrote the music as well.