The longest I have to travel for Thanksgiving is about 35 minutes. Hearing your story, I am as thankful as ever.
As far as kids go... Telling them no doesn't do much either. I have an 8 year old that was raised similar to me, and I think I came out okay. She is taught right from wrong, she is punished when she does wrong, and she is told no if she starts to do wrong, or is getting carried away...
Then she goes to school and learns all the sh** that her bratty little friends do, and comes home and starts acting out. At home, or with her little bratty school friends she is a terror. I guess the one thing that I can be proud of is how she acts when she is not around her friends, or at home with just mommy and daddy.
I took her with me to my uncle's this weekend. His kids (4 boys) are a handful, and then some. Every 5 minutes one of us is reprimanding them. Their mother (who thankfully is no longer in the picture) was awful. She had all their ears pierced by the time they were like 4 or 5 (which I think covered the 3 oldest), and she bought them all cell phones (once again, I think the oldest was maybe 4) because she thought they could call her any time they wanted. Basically, at the time she only had supervised visitations, and only got to talk to them when my uncle approved, so she tried to circumvent that by buying them cell phones as a "gift".
She had no job. Stole money for drugs. Was bringing the kids into a home that had animal feces all over the floor, some so old it was all dried up, and crumbled. Trash everywhere. Yes, this lady was a real winner. In fact, her oldest son was happy when they took away her rights. She now has zero rights, and can not talk to, or see the kids. He was abused often enough, and was old enough to see the filth, and abuse, and how it affected his younger brothers. At the age of 8 he flat out told me he "hated that bit**". I tell you all of this so you know how the kids are, because with a parent like that, they are bound to be trouble.
So, I am there, and they are acting out big time. My little one is an angel. She is polite, doesn't act out. While she did get a little rambunctious at one point playing with that wild pack of boys, she wasn't doing anything worthy of being yelled at. She did get bit at one point, but luckily the youngest (I think he is 4) didn't bite hard enough to break any skin, so I just cleaned it up.
I guess my point is, that it doesn't matter how you raise your kids in this day and age, because television, and their friends will corrupt them as soon as they leave your house. And at home, she is an absolute brat... But put her around other people (not her school friend) and you can see how much of an angle she can be.