Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I've only not been home at Thanksgiving one time and it was awful. I love it because of the food, more specifically, because I get to cook most of the food. Dad is a complete traditionalist when it comes to the turkey, the dressing, the mashed potatoes and the cranberry fluff. We have the recipes for the dressing and the fluff in Granny's handwriting that my mom keeps in a special place in the recipe drawer.

I also have The Fork. It's a fork that for some reason I associate with cooking with Granny. I don't really know where it came from. It's ginormous and it has notches on the sides just below the tines. I can't make Thanksgiving food without it. Mom has tried to substitute another large fork, but it's not The Fork. Someday I'll pass it on to Chloe.

One of our family traditions is that we do our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. It started when Todd got married and we needed to figure out a time share with them. Lisa's family is bigger than ours, so they have more people to work around. I really love it and it's become way more normal to me than having it on Thursday. Here's why we do our dinner on Friday:

1. As I said, Todd can go to his in-laws
2. Most everyone works through Wednesday, so it's tough to pull off a big dinner in that amount of time. This way, we can do some cooking on Thursday and some on Friday and not be rushed
3. The stores are open, so if we need something we can go get it
4. We can invite other people, because they've already done their dinner
5. I can watch the Cowboys play on Thursday without interruption

The great thing is that we can even still go shopping on Black Friday, but we do it in the evening when everyone else has gone home. It's a win-win.

Another family tradition is pictured above - the littlest one crumbles the cornbread. I love how Chloe is sitting up on the kitchen counter and tucked under the cabinet. Alas, she will be too big this year to do that, but she is still going to be crumbling the cornbread. Next year Ian will be able to join her.