Thanksgiving Traditions

Every year our family celebrates Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.Many families have their own traditions that they follow each year. Our family is no different.

Travel
One of the best things about Thanksgiving is spending time with family. My family lives mainly in Minnesota and therefore we like to pack up the natives and either drive or fly up north to visit my family at least every other year. Anyone who has ever traveled with small kids knows that this is a feat within itself and requires lots of planning, packing and repacking. One of the joys of the holiday.

The Grub..hhmmm I mean... Feast :)
We pretty much stick with ttraditional foods here include turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, cornbread, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce, tons and tons of cranberry sauce actually. We LOVE the stuff~!Lets not forget the pie's though: pumpkin, pecan, sweet potato, and apple oh my! The last 2 years have been a little different though in adding to our traditions. We have some family members who have gone vegan and that has been a challenge for some of us...not me, since I am one of the vegetarians in the house, but the rest, lets just say find it "undesirable".  You know vegetables and fruits there so terrible. lol

The Wishbone

Oh we fight over this one! The breaking of the turkey's wishbone is something we all love to do. Tisk Tisk I know, I know, so hypocritical of me, but hey I still enjoy it. You neverr  know one year I may win and we will all have world peace...world peace by my definition of course, not yours...lol couldn't resist sorry.

Helping Others
Our local church body has a couple that operates a non-profit called Our Calling, and they are dedicated to helping serve the homeless in Dallas, physically, emotionally, but more importantly spiritually. One way they do this is by hosting an annual Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless. Our family has not participated in it, but this year we plan to start.  We also do canned food drives and the like to help out others families. We have been those other families before and have a desire to help when we can.

TV
We adore watching the New York City Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and of course FOOTBALL!! Just saying

Tossing the Pig Skin!
Football, football and more football. A family favorite in our home after we have all ate so much we can hardly move, is to toss the football around and "attempt" a go at a scrimmage game. None of us can play worth a flip, but we love just hanging out and smack talking and having some old fashioned family fun that everyone can play. If we are not playing football, we are normally playing baseball. We love our sports.

Fast Facts- (taken from the national geographic kids magazine, which my 2 younger ones adore)

• The largest pumpkin pie ever made weighed 2,020 pounds (916.25 kilograms).
• A ripe cranberry will bounce.
• All turkeys and chickens have wishbones.
• Canadians celebrate their own Thanksgiving every October.
• Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863.
• The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in 1924.

So what are your Thanksgiving traditions?  I would love to hear abou them, who knows maybe we have some in common.