Ah well, as a big fan of all things American, the offer to experience a proper family Thanksgiving was too good to pass up, so after I made some sticky parsnips this morning and then locked Tom's keys in the boot of his car, along with the many other dishes and gifts Bambi has been slaving over (whoops), we headed to Orange County - the OC! - to spend the day with the husband of Bambi's deceased aunt.
Turns out - and to be fair, I had been warned - that Orange County is nothing like the fancypants paradise depicted in 'The OC' on TV. The area we went to was kind of weird and suburban and we got lost in a maze of streets for quite some time.
Eventually we found the house and were very warmly welcomed by the masses of Bam's relatives who were there. Bambi had warned us that most people there would be pretty right wing and that we'd probably be better off avoiding politics as a subject and she wasn't wrong!
Most of the people were very conservative and Bam's uncle-by-marriage converted to Mormonism after the death of his wife and his family are very religious, with one of his daughters heading off to be a missionary in Florida for two years.
There were a couple of cute kids running around and a bunch of old people I didn't really talk to. It was nice to see Bambi's family and to chat to her Dad and brother and her Mum even joined me, jumping up and down on the huge trampoline we spotted in the back garden!
Everyone was terribly friendly and we felt very welcome as we worked our way down the 
seemingly endless line of dishes of meat, yams (yeay!), creamed corn (euch) and other Thanksgiving staples. Conversation did meander into politics over lunch, which revealed some interesting points of view, but it was all very amicable.
I didn't much warm to the husband of Bam's cousin, who repossesses cars for a living and likes it, or the husband of another of her cousins who asked us what we're going to do about the Muslim problem in London, referred to DC as 'a very dark city' and proudly talked about his love of guns and cars. But hey, it was all part of the experience!
Max and I had a nice time - probably more in an anthropological way than anything else - but I think Bam and Tom were relieved to leave. We watched the awesome 'Johnny Guitar' (top of their list of movies we should see) when we got home and then watched another film, too, but I fell asleep, as befits one who's gorged themselves on festive food all day.
This morning, we cruised down the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) to a lovely beach called Paradise Cove, stopping off at Malibu Pier on the way. It was far too cold to lounge about at the beach, so we wandered up and down for a while and then had a deliciously enormous lunch that would keep Max and me going on the flight home. *sniff*
One consolation for leaving our fun friends/family was that 'Wall-E' was shown on the plane, once more managing to reduce Max and me to tears, despite being on one of those tiny communal screens (it's SO good!). And we also watched 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' which was in no way good, though we did chuckle when Brendan Fraser said, "Ladies and gentlemen [there are only two other people with him], I give you... the centre of the earth".
It was really late by the time we landed and the SuperShuttle ride home took FOREVER, adding insult to the injury of our fun (but cold) holiday being over.
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