Thanksgiving was yesterday. My kids have been off school (and driving me nuts) and we had several traditions to uphold. The first is that someone *always* gets ill the week of Thanksgiving. Every. Danged. Year. Without fail. This year was the hubby. though he is major denial of how sick he is. He wants me to hold off on the Mcturkey until Sunday. That alone should make him realize he doesn’t feel well (we still maintained our regular schedule for his entire family meal).

The Mcturkey being the second in the list of traditions. One year, hubby’s mom made manicotti for Thanksgiving and the hubby bitched and bitched for a good, solid fours months. You think I am exaggerating, but I am so not! So much he whined that I now make our Mcturkey the week of Thanksgiving to ensure that he has his stupid turkey—though I will say his mom hasn’t repeated “her choice” of what to server for her meal. (Yes, he’s a big ole baby!)

Football is an obvious tradition in a sports household—though I like it less and less every years—but what can you do?

For some reason baking has become a tradition. I like desserts! And I will end up making umpteen different batches of cookies by the end of the week. Shortbread is the flavor de jour this year—I tend to obsess and then overdo—another tradition I suppose. I will usually go through a couple of bags of flour & sugar and multiple sticks of butter… cookies w/o gobs of butter is just plain wrong.

You’d hope that being thankful would be a tradition that would especially be strong this week, but with teenagers, I am still trying to get them out of the “how does it affect me” mode. It’s a slow process but one I will endure and eventually achieve (or else!)

One tradition I do NOT partake in… Black Friday (or Thursday as it should be called now that *all* the stupid stores are opening early—what a shame!) I think because I worked retail when the hubby was in college, that shopping day has less than zero appeal to me!

What traditions will you observe this week? Which are new and which are family favorites?

I wish you all a very

           HAPPY THANKSGIVING!