What are you doing this year for Thanksgiving? Staying home, traveling, celebrating on a different day, not celebrating at all? What's your menu? Do you do traditional turkey or do you have your own traditions that you follow?

We're having our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday (after Thanksgiving) due to oldest DS's schedule. He and his GF will go to her parents house for dinner on Thursday night but we decided that two Thanksgiving feasts in one day is too much. Plus, her folks both work so they are limited as to when they can have their family dinner (and get everyone together at one time). Her grandmother is getting aged and really looks forward to having a big family get together on Thanksgiving Day, too. So......we'll have ours on Sunday. It'll be just as good!

I'm planning to fix a turkey breast, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce and Apple-Walnut Cake with Vanilla Cream Sauce for dessert. I've made myself hungry just talking about it!

I also plan to put up whatever Christmas decorations I'll have that weekend, too.

So, what's everybody else doing?

I was hoping to come to Kelly's house for some Homemade Pumpkin Bread.

I'll be home thursday, waiting for TG leftovers on the weekend. DD will have traditional TG dinner for her DH and Kiddles, I will not attend, as it's just too much trouble to get me from here to there.

Just the two of us, probably ham, baked potato, a vegetable. Something relatively easy. My daughter is in Florida, my son goes hunting (with my blessing), my granddaughter will be at her "other" grandparents'.

We don't care. All that celebrating tuckers us out anyway. We always get invites (including the "other" grandparents ), all heartfelt, but we always decline. Graciously, I hope.

Once in a while somebody asks me if I miss the traditional celebration. What I REALLY miss is going to my Grandma and Grandpa's house with my parents and my little brother, my two aunts and their husbands, my cousins, and a handful of other relatives. Since I can't turn back the calendar fifty years, I'll settle for new traditions.

Sally, you know you're always welcome at my house!

Both kids will be home from college. Both claim they hate turkey so having ham, scalloped potatoes. I insist on stove top stuffing and DS seconds me. I want to make whole berry cranberry sauce unless we get to Ikea to buy a jar of lingonberries. Pumpkin pie (a favorite) and apple pie for dessert.

Kicker, my Mom used to make the best homemade cranberry relish. She had a little contraption that you turned with your hand and it crushed up the whole cranberries. I remember us doing that together a few days before Thanksgiving. The relish had to "sit" a few days in the fridge so the ingredients could blend. I wish I still had that little grinder.

I'm like B2Y.....I long for the "old days" when the holidays were actually fun. I guess maybe they were a stressful for my Mom....but I just remember the great times with family that's now gone. I'm so thankful for the memories.

I make that relish. And with the hand grinder or now I do it with the blender. But the hand grinder is the best. Love the cranberry orange relish I believe mine is called. Has an apple, orange and of course the cranberries plus the sugar, etc. (My Mom's recipe). YUMM! I miss the old days too.

My Grandma and then my Mother & Aunt made a homemade cranberry orange relish. I hated it...too crunchy. I preferred the old fashioned Ocean Spray, canned variety, with the ridges..

The homemade dressing/stuffing is what I, Bro and my cousins treasured. Absolute scratch...bread on top of counter with a towell over it, to dry out and homemade cornbread in it..smothered in homemade giblet gravy. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. The turkey was a side dish..LOL

Drooooooooling.

Giblet gravy........yummmmmmm......

I'll never forget the day I learned what was in it. My Dad laughed so hard at the face I made! I still ate it, though.

We are a very traditional family. We have to get together and we help each other. We have the largest house. Unfortunately it is also the most inconvenient. We live in a bilevel so you have to go either up or down stairs to just get in the house! We will have to install a stair lift sometime in the future. I don't need it yet but my Mom sure could use it. But insurance won't help me pay for what my Mom needs and I don't! A little off subject there.

I am one of four kids. My Dad is dead and my Mom and my sister and I live here. One brother lives 4 hours away and is able to come. My other brother comes for Christmas. My sister has a son here and a daughter that comes for Christmas. We have 2 girls, one lives here and the other lives 3 hours away. She's the one with the 2 precious grand daughters and they always come. So that means 17 here for Thanksgiving, 25 for Christmas.

We have a traditional turkey and ham. We haven't had the green bean casseerole in several years so that's on the menu.

The most difficult thing about holidays now is that it's the grand children who now do most of the cooking. Some would say what is wrong with that but it's our physical problems that have made us incapable of doing the whole dinner. It's hard for us to just sit and watch the younger ones do the work. Yes, we do some of the light things. It helps to see the precious little girls! And my daughter and my sisters daughter in law are fantastic cooks so we are proud of them and have a wonderful meal and fellowship.

My youngest grandaughter's birthday is tomorrow so we always have a b'day party on Thanksgiving eve.

Oh, another new tradition that the young ones started is that the guys now clean everything up!!!! This was my sisters son's idea. I never know what my kitchen is going to look like, what bowls are going to be in what cabinet and what my refrig looks like but I like it. I do buy a lot of those 'disposable' bowls so they can at least not have to tear up my tupperware cabinet and everyone has something to take tings home n.