This week I’m headed to my favorite place on earth: HOME to my parents’ house on the Jersey Shore.

I’ll be spending the next four days in the company of my family, eating too much pie and drinking too much wine and playing too many board games and laughing way too hard. We spend Thanksgiving Day with my mom’s side of the family, known as “the big side”. My mom has seven brothers and sisters, which means lots of cousins. We now rent a house to host Thanksgiving in, because people keep procreating and no one’s house is big enough on its own anymore. There will be 55 of us around the table this year, which isn’t even a record–we’ve broken 60 before! (Now do you see why I’m concerned about the cost of my wedding? ‘Cause that’s not even half the family.) And then Friday morning we’ll attempt to work off (some of) our epic meal with our flag football game, played in memory of my cousin Cheryl whom we lost to cancer four years ago.

I write a lot about traveling and how wonderful it is to go places outside your comfort zone, and I mean all of that, really I do. But if I can be cheesy for a moment–there’s really nowhere on earth that’s better than somewhere filled with the people you love. It really is not where you are, but who you’re with that matters.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Image of my parents’ front porch, taken by me.