I’ll be introducing my new ladyfriend to my family. So here goes nothing.
That’s me ( well, not literally ). Only I’ll be working 2-11 p.m., since that is a compressed workday for me. I’m still the junior guy after 23 years, so I get stuck working most of the major holidays.
Unsure if there are larger family plans afoot for the weekend afterwards. We’re a miserably bad lot at organizing more than three days in advance of anything, so we’ll see how much of a bust this Thanksgiving will be. Might turn out okay, but probably it is going to be a pretty meh year.
Best of luck :).
First you have to wake up and watch the Macy’s thanksgiving day parade … light breakfast take off jamies drive to the all you can eat salad bar passing all of the closed fast food places, catch a movie, home for football or I could help serve thanksgiving at the local rescue mission and take home a big container of food.
Plus give thanks for our armed forces not being in the Syrian conflict and on the way home from Afghanistan
My husband will be working to let the family guys have the day off, so my day will consist of trying to find something on TV not related to holidays, reading, checking in here, and playing Minecraft–IOW, same things I do every other day.
This year, I’m going to my boyfriend’s family’s Thanksgiving extravaganza. Should be about 10-12 people. It’ll be a nice time 
I’m stoked that this will be my first Thanksgiving not spent with my mother. The food we make is good, but the last few years she has spent half the time lamenting about the fact that nobody takes her up on the invitations she sends out–it’s a pretty big downer.
Oye, silenus this sounds like my dream Thanksgiving. PM me some photos, or better yet an invitation for next year.
I will be hangin’ out with the gabachos here in my pueblito. I don’t hang out with them much. But they are going to have a traditional potluck T’day supper. Will be a change from tamales and cochinita.
Dutch in the Netherlands here. Nothing even remotely like Thanksgiving here. It is a completely ordinary day.
And while we end up adopting many American holidays (Fathers day, Mothers day, Valentine, Halloween) I’m not sorry we leave Thanksgiving in the US where it belongs. From what I get from movies and such, it is usually not a happy day for families or poultry.
Will be cooking turkey and all the trimmings while the Macy’s Day Parade blares from the TV. Thanksgiving is fairly easy for us as it’s my older son’s favorite holiday; it’s his requested birthday meal every summer and we fix turkey off and on throughout the year. Football will be on on other TVs in the house, or a muffled surround-sound movie. I’ll yell for a dishwasher (“No, I have to have THAT pot again for the…”) and shit a brick when my younger son leaves the house twenty minutes before everything’s ready and then all will come together when the broccoli casserole comes out.
The important thing is that my birthday is right before Thanksgiving this year, not ON it when I get to spend the day feeding the horde. What with all the freebies offered not only do I not have to cook, nobody has to officially take me out to eat. Free breakers at Denney’s, free sub at Firehouse, free ice cream at Baskin Robbins. I’m going to fix a mincemeat pie though (yuck cake) because it’s my favorite and It’s My Birthday!
Don’t believe everything you see in the movies. Happy Thanksgivings, like mine and millions of others, don’t make for good cinema.
We’re hosting a dozen or so people this year, including family and friends. I’m doing virtually all of the cooking, which will be fun. Just trying to decide whether or not I should fry, smoke, or roast the turkey this year. We had a new oven installed yesterday, so maybe we’ll christen the sucker and see how the convection feature works on this one.
I’ll set up a jigsaw puzzle in the living room near the fire on Wednesday night, and the kids will watch the parade first thing in the morning. I’ll also set a TV to football, and leave it there. I need to remember to have the growlers filled up with beer and cider on Wednesday.
- Absolutely all of the food should be served correctly. Somehow it doesn’t happen! My SO is particularly offended by this - I always say in another life he could have been a top level chef. He has the skill and the enjoyment, and it appalls him to see all that food being served willy-nilly…then we have to wait for the chronically late.
- Even if the food was served perfectly, it’s still kind of a boring holiday. Everybody sit around and eat until you burst and then get fat! And…that’s it. Oh, sometimes we play Mah-Johngg (Chinese style, not matching tiles, which is like poker with a 13 -card hand) and that’s fun. All too often we don’t though.
Since we’re separated from the rest of the family, TheKid, my mom, and I are spending the day with my best friend and her family. There will 8 of us, total. My mom and her mom can sit and crow for hours on end. Her husband is the cook, so he’ll be in the kitchen all morning. TheKid and I are bringing desserts and pieroghis, my mom is making her fabulous pumpkin bars. Lunch is at 1, we’ll be home by 5.
In the evening, TheKid and I will go watch a movie or something.
It will be much more pleasant than having to deal with family drama and stress.
I expect you’re still recovering from Sinterklaas anyway. 
Nothing, as usual. When you have a daughter who cooks for other people you rarely have holiday meals on the designated day.
Husband and I will probably take our son out for Asian food and maybe a movie in the afternoon.
This, because daughter’s boyfriend works every other weekend, pushes our celebration into December. By then retired husband who went back to work part-time will be directing traffic for the local holiday lights drive. And that means an early meal.
Getting up early and wrestling a cold turkey around is not one of my favorite things to do and after my parents died I was glad not to have to serve a noon meal again. But here I am again.
I love to entertain and pull out all the stops. But I have to admit that I am getting tired of it. You cooks know what a major production a Thanksgiving dinner is.
When my mother was about forty-five she announced she was done and turned it over to me. I announced the same at sixty but nobody has taken up the slack. And none of us care for the buffets.
I did everything to build on family traditions and it’s apparent to me that my children aren’t interested in continuing with them. So it’s not as special for me as it used to be. Last year before we began to eat I said, “Let’s each name one thing we’re thankful for” and you’d think I’d asked everyone to take off their clothes the looks I got.
I get help with the cleaning, cooking and clean-up. And I understand the idea of people wanting to come home for Thanksgiving.
Okay. I do this because all of us like my cooking best. I do it because I love them. And I’m beginning to resent it. Not a good thing, right?
I know exactly how to fix this situation for anyone else but I won’t do it for myself. Setting limits with family is hard, man.
Think I’m going to have to work on being thankful that I have family who want to be with me.
Not a damn thing.
Well, I’m taking my laptop home – I’m off the entire week – and I’ve got to get my self-appraisal done and another project I volunteered to take on is due on Dec. 6th, so I’ll work on that.
My sister and her BF will be visiting me from Ohio the following week (also took vacation for that – so I’m off work for two weeks straight), and they will have already had their turkey dinners, so I’ll probably skip straight to the Christmas baking and decorating and pretend like Thanksgiving never happened. I’m not invited anywhere and 100% of my friends will either be spending the day with their families or on the road… spending the day with their families.
Is that weird? Am I some kind of loser because I don’t like my family* and don’t go to visit them much? Or because they don’t come to see me* or invite me to anything?
- Mostly because they act like they don’t like me much. Or maybe I just don’t matter to them. They don’t seem terribly concerned about my wellbeing so… :: shrug ::
** This will be the first time my sister has visited me in about 16-17 years. My mom stopped visiting since she retired and my dad & stepmom never turn up.
Same thing we’ve done for the past few years. Eat fast food and go to the bar. $3 You Call It all day - what’s not to be thankful for?
I’m sure it will be fine. It’s impossible not to like her, and we’re not staying forever.
Sheer laziness, possibly interspersed with house-cleaning. Back when my family was pretty much in the same state/city, I was the one who cooked and hosted, which was fun. But now I’m an empty nester who lives several hundred miles from my nearest relatives. So, little to no cooking, and I probably won’t even have anything resembling a traditional thanksgiving meal. I think last year I even (lazily) had Top Ramen and cheese.
I plan on playing GW2, a LOT. 
Then I’ll be sure to wave!
Do Nothing Day.
Followed by “Buy Nothing but Beer and Toilet Paper Day.”
I think we’ll be doing the usual trip to my wife’s parents’ place. There will be seven - the four of us, the two of them, and my wife’s sister.
We discussed helping at SubVets instead. They serve several hundred dinners each year, at no charge: Veterans, shut-ins, SubScol students, local police stations, Subase duty personnel, &c, &c. Maybe we’ll do that next year…