Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Thanksgiving Traditions


What a fantastic week ahead! I will be spending the rest of my evening baking pies, making salads and snacks for a fun-filled several days at the Turner household! There's just something in the air when the holidays are here. The anticipation is exhilarating!

The apple pie I just made for Thanksgiving!!

I can't wait to spend the rest of the evening cooking away, preparing for the weekend of eating, and I look forward to packing my bags and spending several days and nights with the Turners! What a great break from work and the normal pace of life it will be. Time to just relax, cook, eat, laugh and spend time together.




The holiday season is here. The most wonderful time of the year!!




An interesting thought I've had is.....why must we wait to have kids to start holiday traditions? I would love to start some Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions with my husband. It's important to make holidays special and memorable and I also believe that traditions and memories are so much more than food and recipes. So here are some ideas of traditions this Thanksgiving that I would like to start this year:




1. Make a "Holiday Notebook". Have everyone in both families write

1. What they are thankful for this year:

2. The best thing that happened this year:

3. What they pray for the new year:




People can bring photos from throughout the year of special events or significant times

they were thankful, and we can also take a picture of the whole family each year too. Making it a "holiday notebook" makes it so that we can use it from Thanksgiving to the New Year--to get both families involved. And what a fun memento to look back on down the road?




2. I love the tradition of standing around the dinner table before Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, holding hands as each person says one thing they are thankful for. I think maybe a more fun way would even be to use a video camera each year. Have someone go around and ask each person individually throughout the day what they are thankful for. How fun would that be to watch over the years?!?! And maybe everyone should say it again at the dinner table, so everyone can hear all the answers.




3. Hostess gift. I learned this from my mom and two grandmas the first year I was married, Josh and I hosted Easter dinner in our small apartment and I couldn't believe it, when all 3 of them walked in with a "Hostess Gift"! It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. From that point on, I've committed providing a small gift to whoever is responsible for hosting and cooking the dinner for that holiday when it's not at my house.




4. I think it would be fun to chose someone each Thanksgiving to express thankfulness to. It would be fun to choose someone in the family each year and that year everyone does something for that one person. Whether it's a small gift, a note, or just a verbal declaration of Thanksgiving, I think it would be so special to choose one person out of the family to really shower with Thanksgiving. Or if family members aren't comfortable with that, we could always pick a person in the military or pastor in a church and do something special for that person.




5. Thanksgiving Craft: I think it would be so much when Reece gets a little older, and other kiddos are added to the mix on both sides, to have a special Thanksgiving "Craft" that they can work on together that morning before dinner.




6. I would love to start making the Friday a tradition! Whether it's always "Black Friday" in the morning and family time that evening. Or a completely chill family day, staying in PJ's all day, watching movies, putting puzzles together, snacking on all the leftovers and desserts and candy from the day before and making a flag football field in the backyard for everyone to play. I don't know what I want Friday to become, but I would love if it became a tradition! (this one might have to wait until we have kids, right now we might just be at the mercy of whoever is hosting I suppose) :)




So, you see, you don't have to have 3 kids to start family traditions! From the moment you say "I Do" family traditions and special moments and memories can be made!




I'll let you know how much traditions go this year! :) I'd better get on it, since we leave tomorrow for Thanksgiving!

3 comments:

  1. I love your idea of a Holiday Notebook! :)

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  2. yum and wonderful times. Love you much

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  3. My daughter does a gingerbread house each year, first it was just them and now the girls help. I always look forward to what one they buy and put together.
    Edna D.

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