Thursday, December 5, 2013

I’m Grateful for my Unconventional Thanksgiving



Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. After all, how can you not love being constantly reminded of the awesomeness of life and it all ends with family and food. My two favorite things! But it’s funny how something that normally is about me being grateful actually taught me what gratitude was all about this year.  For the last month I’ve seen so many gratitude posts on social media that even a Thanksgivingphile like me I was a little burned out. But then I got taught The True Meaning of The Season. No, really. So here is my one and only Thanksgiving post for 2013. A week and half late, because even in the blogosphere I’m perpetually late.

This year for the first time ever I was hosting a Thanksgiving dinner. I come from a big family that always had massive Thanksgivings with family and friends and an overwhelming amount of food. My mom is the most amazing pie maker on the planet and Thanksgiving would sometimes feature as many as a dozen pies not including cheesecakes and other desserts. Oh, and turkey, mashed potatoes, and other hearty goodness. In my head I was convinced that that I would create a smaller version of that. One where I got to snack on all the food instead of being chased out of the kitchen (younger version) or setting up tables and chairs (older version).

Then two days before Thanksgivng all of my guests canceled in 24 hours. There were a lot of things leading up to it, like bad weather and cute boyfriends, but the result was a nearly defrosted 14 lb turkey and no guests. As you might imagine I wasn’t in the most grateful mood. My husband and I sat down and decided to make the best Thanksgiving we could even if it was just the two of us. We sketched out what the two of us thought was essential and acknowledged that despite all of our planning it would probably still suck. Lastly my husband putting the Turkey up for grabs on facebook. That would be a lot of turkey if I actually like turkey, which I don’t, making it an insane amount of bird. Turned out that this part was the most important thing we did that morning.

Well, no one wanted the turkey. But it turns out that there were people in town who wanted us! A friend from church called and said that she and another family that we know were getting together and invited us along. It didn’t take much thinking to say yes. So Thanksgiving was spent with friends, a ridiculous amount of food, and screaming kids overloading on sugar and potatoes. Exactly how it should be. Even though these weren’t the people who I thought I would be spending Thanksgiving with I couldn’t have been happier. Plus I didn’t have to do any of the clean up. Truly something to be grateful for.

And what about the turkey you ask? Well, on Saturday my husband cooked it up. Just for the two of us. It was delicious.

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