Happy Thanksgiving!

Although the official festivities are not yet underway, our day is wonderful already. We all love having Daddy home today, and the kids got good snuggle time in before breakfast.

Later we will go over to Aunt Linda’s house for the Thanksgiving meal. Silas still thinks it’s Linda’s birthday, or God’s birthday (which we remind him is Christmas), or Laura’s birthday, which it will be sort of since there will be cake for her because Tuesday was her birthday. See why he is confused?

This will be very different for me, because it will be the first Thanksgiving since I was old enough to remember that I will not be with my family in Waukesha. :-(

Missing them got me to thinking about some of the Griffiths Thanksgiving traditions, some of which are as follows, in no special order:

1. Mom saying “It’s tradition!” about something.

2. Lemon Poppyseed Bread. It is highly unlikely that any Pilgrim made this bread, but Mom does.  It is the one thing that I doubt anyone will make here either, so I bought myself some poppyseeds and I am going to make my own. And mom’s right about that one: it is tradition.

3. Cranberry Relish. I used to think that the cranberry relish Dad made every year was his own mysterious Dad recipe, which made it more special. Turns out it’s just the recipe on the back of the cranberry bag. I think (mom can correct me if I’m wrong) that the only reason Dad made it most years when I was young is that it required the use of the food processor, which intimidated Mom. But it’s special anyway.

4. Remarks about the turkey’s degree of frozen-ness. Once upon a time (well, the year that Grandma Griffiths lived with us) Mom bought a slightly larger turkey than in times past. Consequently it was not quite thawed all the way through, and took an extra long time to cook that year. This drove Grandma bananas. She kept asking “Is it done? Is it time to eat? What’s wrong?” which drove Mom bananas. Grandma couldn’t understand what could possibly be the reason this turkey refused to be done, until finally, she hit upon the obvious answer: The store had frozen the turkey twice. It probably still drives Mom bananas, but none of us can help asking now if she got a turkey that had been frozen twice this year.

5. Mom asking if anyone wants pie about 5 minutes after we have stuffed ourselves. We all groan, and eat pie 4 hours later.

6. Playing in the other room: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the dog show (I don’t know how that one got to happening every year- no one really cares), and eventually the Packers game.

7. Though not actually on Thanksgiving, the Friday after all the Christmas decorations come out from the attic, in a long box-brigade line. (Mom would rather die than shop black Friday.) This year I will be extra sad to miss it, because not only can I not help Mom get her things out, I can’t get mine out, since the house is still  not done, and the boxes with Christmas things are still in the ambiguous somewhere of the barn.

I’m sure there are others, but those are the main things that stick out in my memory. This year though, I get to learn about and share the Thanksgiving traditions of family this side of the country.

I miss my Wisconsin family, am happy to be with Maryland family, and am extremely thankful for both!

 

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