It’s 10 days until Thanksgiving and two days until I travel again. Thankfully, this is a really quick trip and it’s as stress-free as I can make it. I am flying into a small airport, taking a car service to and from the airport and onsite just for one six-hour presentation. Easy. Peasy. Done.
Then, I come home for Thanksgiving. This year, we are celebrating on Friday vs. Thursday. With the kids now having in-laws and the need for us to share holidays more, it just makes sense. And honestly? It was a fabulous move for all of us. My sister now gets to share a meal with a friend and colleague who is usually alone for the holiday; my niece gets to celebrate with her brand new husband’s family. And us? Well, Darryl and I are starting a new family tradition.
Normally, Thanksgiving is a rush for us. It starts the weekend before with both cooking and cleaning. I also decorate, buy the wine and food, clean some more because of our pets and generally scramble from start to finish. This year? It’s gonna be glorious!
First, we can do our usual but with less time pressure. The chicken for the turducken gumbo is already cooked and frozen. The duck and turkey breast can be cooked next weekend. The rest of the sides? I have all day Wednesday to get the majority of them done and prepped. Then on Thursday? That’s where the magic happens, baby!
On Thursday, our only tasks are to assemble the gumbo and I will likely bake pies. That’s it. And you know what that means? We are planning a morning hike, afternoon cooking/baking and a quiet dinner of gumbo and pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. After that, we can watch the dog show – the cats love it! – and relax with a glass of wine. We typically have to record it and watch it later. We will also call Darryl’s parents.
Not, by any stretch of the imagination, some sort of wild Thanksgiving that anyone else would envy. But for us? It sounds just fabulous. In fact, with any luck, we can keep our Thanksgiving tradition on Friday for the foreseeable future. It just works for all of us and no one is a big “Black Friday” shopper around here.
And so today, I actually begin my prep. While Darryl sleeps in a little bit, I’m up and compiling my lists. There’s the dinner list, the grocery list, the to-do list and the decorating list. They all go into the same worksheet and each is a separate tab that feeds into an overall worksheet that serves as my “Thanksgiving completion dashboard”. Sounds too complicated? That’s my specialty – my lists have lists. All joking aside, this system is tried and true and makes each Thanksgiving as seamless as it can possibly get. I also re-use the list and generally just update each year.
So, time to revise the lists. Time to go and get back from this final trip. Time to plan for a fabulous Thursday followed by a family and fun-filled Friday.
Let’s do this thing!
The Yuppie Homesteader 