Thanks for starting this thread, SnowAngel! 🙂

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday - all the togetherness of Christmas but far less stress, the wonderful last hurrah for autumn (my favorite season), and the food is nothing to sneeze at! My family tends to do a big Thanksgiving and a small Christmas, which is just the way I like things. We have the staples - turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and usually some sweet potatoes, and the veggies may vary. But where we really go all out is the pies. I think last year, we easily had 8-10 different pies on the pie table. And believe it or not, it mostly got eaten!

For obvious reasons, this year we're not doing the big family gathering. I see it as an opportunity to practice Thanksgiving recipes on a year when we have a little more time and fewer people. My mom is trying to perfect making gravy - she likes nice, thick gravy, but we never seem to have enough. Hopefully by next year, we'll have it down pat!

Some things I'm thankful this year are:

• Safety for my family and friends - it's been a rough year, but so far, we're all pulling through
• A stable job, and the ability to work from home for the foreseeable future
• A recent burst of creativity!
• Seeing my immediate family for Thanksgiving and still at least having the time off to unwind

~Zoom meetings, phone texting, phone calls, and other ways to stay in touch

~Nice weather to get outside and go for walks, bike rides, or just play

~Teaching old dogs new tricks! In this case I've learned how to knit and my kids and I have been doing Spanish on Duolingo

~Being able to homeschool my kids. Is it hard? Yes. But I'm thankful that I haven't had to deal with the school system during this time.

~My husband has a job and has been able to work from home.

Oh, just thinking about that many pies is making me hungry, @Ryadian. A couple months ago my mom took a food sensitivity test and currently eggs and most dairy are a no for her, so this year we are having birch sap pie for Thanksgiving. However today my sister Scarlet is planning to test a no egg, no dairy pumpkin pie.   Having seen the ingredients list, I am optimistic about the final result of the new pumpkin pie recipe.

~Libraries

SnowAngel

Like most, Thanksgiving is going to be very different this year. We're still not sure what it'll look like, but it'll be tiny.

I'm thankful for a lot of things, but a partial list (in no particular order) is:

• Being able to take and pass an important exam this year
• My job and the people & leadership in my company
• My friends and family (including a number here!)
• Library pickups
• Books and stories
• God's graciousness in so many ways

Even though 2020 was rough year, no doubt about it, there was also much to be thankful for. 

+ My son, who was born this August

+  The rains that came early this year (which in Zambia is a big deal)

+ The fact that my brother-in-law was finally able to fly from back home from Cuba and reunite with my sister and their son after being separated from them for 10 months due to lockdowns, borders being closed, and no air flights

+ My family and the fact that they are all safe and healthy

Our Thanksgiving Day was much like last year. We had brisket, gravy, cheesy potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, green peas, and cranberry jello salad for lunch and tomato soup with fresh bread and cheese for supper. Dessert was birch sap pecan pie with whipped cream enjoyed mid afternoon. 

We played ColorKu, Catan, Scrabble, Quiddler, and Occupations, we also did an entire thousand piece puzzle.   It was a full day.

Today I am thankful for Christmas! And Christmas lights, Christmas ornaments, Christmas music, Christmas foods, Chistmas books....

SnowAngel

I'm thankful for the renewed appreciation I have for things like church services and the fellowship there, gathering with family and friends, as well as the virtual substitutes.  

(Thankful for all of my NarniaWeb friends! )

We had the smallest gathering for Thanksgiving that I can remember, but we also may have very well had the best Thanksgiving dinner I can remember. 🙂 My mom successfully perfected her gravy, and she tried a new technique for the turkey, and it all turned out really well. We had mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, homemade stuffing, cranberry sauce, and salad because I decided we didn't have quite enough food.

We did a Zoom call in the evening with family, taking advantage of the fact that Zoom generously lifted the 40 minute time limit on group calls for the day. Time zone issues meant that some of us missed each other, but it was nice to at least see each other. Plus, we have a tradition of playing telephone pictionary* every year, and... my sister found an online version of the game! That was a lot of fun. 🙂

*Telephone pictionary starts with everyone writing down a word/phrase on a piece of paper, and passing it along to the next person in the group. That person then has to draw what the person before them wrote. The next person has to guess what the drawing is supposed to be, and so it goes until the paper gets back to the person who started it.

In a sense it was more like Lentsgiving. But there is much to be thankful for, for a Lord who never leaves us nor forsakes us.

I mostly had chicken and the good bread. 🙂