Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for a long time, but I often feel like it gets overlooked. I love thanksgiving because it is a holiday to celebrate all that is good in our lives and give thanks!
We have so many blessings and I feel like thanksgiving could be an even bigger holiday if we truly think about how we can show thanks during this month!
Growing up, we had a lot of the traditional traditions of a family turkey bowl and going around the table to say what we are thankful for. I loved always watching our first Christmas movie on Thanksgiving after a HUGE yummy dinner.
I love that thanksgiving is right before Christmas because it is the perfect transition from giving thanks to focusing on all the Savior has done for us and celebrating His birth.
After I got married, my husband and I had several discussions about what traditions we wanted to keep from each of our families for the holidays and what we wanted to do to make the holidays our own. I absolutely love being able to start a tradition that I hope will really help strengthen my family as we create memories each year.
I knew that I wanted to do more for thanksgiving… So here are some of the Thanksgiving family traditions that we have started and some things that we are working towards doing…
THANK YOU CARDS: Instead of the traditional Christmas cards, we have started to write thank you notes to the people that really made a difference in our lives this year… I love that this is totally something I can get my kids involved in. Last year, Lanae helped decorate cards for her aunts and uncles as well as some new friends that she had made. She helped me stuff the envelopes, put the stamps on and place them in the mailbox. She was so excited to send her thank you cards!
PIE NIGHT: Yes, you read that right… A night focused on PIE! I don’t know about you, but on Thanksgiving I honestly can hardly stomach dessert. I have a hard time leaving room for it because of all the other delicious food! So… Scott and I thought up PIE NIGHT. Another night that focuses on gratitude, giving thanks and family! And PIE! We have had Pie Night for the last 4 years and love it! We get together with family (when we have them close by) and friends. Everyone brings their favorite pie… Mmm. Then we play a gratitude game, like Gratitude charades or I just saw this really cute Gratitude Scattegories that I might try this year. Really, you can take any of your family’s favorite games and turn it into a gratitude game! This is such a fun tradition and I’m so glad we started it!
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Every year we have a little family meeting at the beginning of November and decide how we are going to focus our efforts on expressing gratitude during the month. Last year, we made a brand new white board, hung it up and would take turns writing things we were grateful for. This year, we are using The Dating Divas Thanksgiving banner and writing the things we are grateful for (in secret). We are excited to have a big reveal on Thanksgiving to share all the things we are thankful for!
THANKSGIVING DINNER: Obviously this is a tradition that most families have… Ha ha! At least I hope most families have Thanksgiving dinner. I love to cook and bake and try new things. And so does my husband… Well, he loves to try new things. So we decided that every year we would try one new dish to see if it is worthy to be added to the Thanksgiving menu! Last year’s new dish, Bacon Wrapped Green Beans, made it on to the menu this year. It’s an excellent replacement for the old Green Bean Casserole. I’m still on the lookout for this year’s new dish!
So far, that’s all we’ve got! I’d love to hear some of your family’s favorite Thanksgiving traditions that really help you focus on what is important!
Check out this fun Thanksgiving Craft
And I bet you are looking for a nice hot bowl of soup for these cold nights… Try this!!
Lite Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup
These are such great traditions! We received one of those thank you notes! It was precious. Something we should all do more often. Thanks for sharing these sweet ideas. Would love to go to your pie night!!!
Thanks Kami! We would love to have you at Pie Night!! 🙂
I absolutely love these!!! Such great ideas and my mind is super focused on traditions this week because I’m over our Relief Society Activity themed Traditions. If it’s okay, I’d love to share some of these ideas with the women, I’ll totally give you credit 🙂 I’d love to incorporate some of these into our family too. I love the idea of Pie night! It’s so true that after a big meal you don’t feel like dessert! There’s just too many good foods to not try and then you find you’re full before you even finished what’s on the menu for the main course, haha.
Sure! Go ahead and share them… That’s why I share them 😉 And I’d love a shout out… I feel like traditions are super important and they need to be meaningful! Hope your relief society activity goes well!
Your butternut squash soup is delicious!! Thanks for sharing!!
You’re welcome! Love you!