Liz and Vince are still in Greece -- Santorini, actually now. They were to fly home today (Nov. 12) and begin to figure out the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, I'm already looking down the road to how our lives are about to change.

I guess every family must go through this. Children grow up. They marry -- at least most of us hope they will. They have children. And each of those phases brings with it changes that affect our lives in ways we aren't sure we want to imagine.

The good news-bad news is that the Bartges family has already established how they handle the whole in-law obligations. All the Bartges kids -- of which Vince is the baby -- have established a pattern of getting together on Thanksgiving one year and Christmas the next.

As I said, the "good" news is that this year is the Thanksgiving get-together. The bad news is that for the first time in my life as a parent, one of my children will not be here for Thanksgiving. I'm not happy about that; however, I have to be philosophical about it -- Vince and Liz will be here for Christmas. As a result, I don't have to leap that hurdle (a child not here for Christmas) for another year.

And maybe there's even a silver lining to the Thanksgiving plans. Cat has decided that she would like to have Thanksgiving dinner in her home. She's working on inviting Scott's family and ours, so it will be a particularly big Thanksgiving compared to many we have spent. She's a little wary of cooking the turkey, but we've promised to handle that, and everyone coming to dinner will contribute something to making a new tradition.

And as much as I would like to have everyone here, just like when they were kids, I am a firm believer in establishing your own traditions -- particularly when you have children of your own.

Thanksgiving traditions are mostly about food, I think. At our house, we always took inventory of the kids and agreed to make one thing each of them had asked for specifically. For Liz, it was usually crab bisque. For Cat it was often pumpkin pie. And for Mac, it became steamed oysters. (The only problem was that by the time we ate the bisque and the oysters, no one was particularly hungry for turkey.)

This year at Cat's house, it will be up to her to determine what is the tradition in her house. At first I thought the No. 1 tradition might be Thanksgiving dinner on the floor, since she doesn't yet have a dining room table; however, friends of ours volunteered their long folding table (which they bought for just such a purpose), since they are going elsewhere for Thanksgiving this year. Now, if she just had some chairs.