xtcian

Thankfully, we won't be traveling for the first time in 10 years and will stay in Atlanta. However, actual Thanksgiving location is up in the air as our baby is due 3 days after T day, which introduces the challenging aspect of it. So I will be doing one of the following: 1) already home with a newborn 2) in delivery or 3) ready to pop.

We're spending our first Thanksgiving since cohabitation in our new Brookline home and having my family come to us for a change. The most challenging part will be keeping our overly territorial and protective German Shepherd from biting my parents when they walk in the door. Hopefully all those episodes I watched of "The Dog Whisperer" will help me figure that one out.

You guys coming to Cambridge this year or staying in NY?

In NC for Thanksgiving and there is an outside chance that the very same friend who takes me to the dook game each year may let me attend the Ohio State v. UNC basketball game Thanksgiving Eve in Chapel Hill. Even without Greg Oden, I think the Buckeyes are ranked in the Top Ten, so that would be kick ass to see the Heels gave a real challenge.

Scruggs, I'm betting that your belly pops before the turkey and that you and little "V" get to enjoy Thanksgiving together. I hope the final couple of weeks go smoothly.

to see the Heels HAVE a real challenge.

Our typical big challenge for Thanksgiving is how do we manage neing pulled in different directions from both of our families. Over the last ten or so years, this situation has caused many "challenges." My solution this year is to leave town on Thanksgiving Day and go to a small island on the outer banks with my husband and two children. That means that my biggest challenge will be to determine whether we need to drive or ride a bicycle to Howard's Pub or maybe the biggest challenge will be finding a local babysitter for one night on the island. I am looking forward to these challenges and the long weekend.

We're going to western PA (Erie, Oil City, Grove City) to see my husband's family. Most challenging aspect = all that driving in holiday traffic.

We bought a new house and will be moving in on Nov. 17. We will be spending Thanksgiving unpacking boxes and trying to find our pots and pans so that we can cook something.

For thanksgiving I'll be here in Dallas with the in-laws, it should be fun but I have to put on my respectable face and not laugh as they pray to the Texas Trinity: God, Jesus and George W. Bush. They don't seem to know I'm a Democrat, which is just below heathen and devil worshipper in their eyes. For Christmas it's on to my mom's house which should be fun and relaxing for a few days.

We're going to the beach and pretending it is summer!

We're going to my cousin and his wife's for dinner. I expect we'll have to take my mother (age 95) because my brother (who lives with her) will likely be spending the day at a casino. The most challenging aspect will be the fact that my cousin is extremely right wing and a gun nut to boot. Then again, it might be fun this year, given the election results!

Can't post my family laundry online, but it seems like that question was directed at me, so I am compelled to respond.

My parents will be visiting us for Thanksgiving. We are all happy about this.

My husband, however, is refusing to invite his parents, who live two miles away in an ALF. This is very hard for me to deal with, so I find myself compartmentalizing my feelings and hiding them in the recesses of my subconscious. His parents, his choice.

My instincts say shutting them out in this way is the wrong thing to do. However, when informed by my experiences, I understand why he has made this decision.

MIL is plagued with very serious mental illness, and at her very best, lives in a world which revolves entirely around her; And, she's very proactive about getting you into her orbit. However, she does enjoy the kids, even if she spooks them now and then.

FIL is ill, but does nothing for his health, and continues to smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish. The last time we invited him to a meal, he took two bites and then puked at the dinner table. He has zero interest in the kids.

DH plans to fabricate some story about why they can't come over.

OK, so what do we tell my parents? Doesn’t the scenario send a cruel message? "When you're too much of a burden, we will cut you off?" It's not true, but it might be what they take away from this visit.

I think I am afraid that the ILs will believe that I am making these decisions. Why this matters to me, I don’t know. Perhaps it is a karma thing. My only choice is to support my husband's choice.

I think I have convinced him to compromise. We will visit his parents at the ALF on Friday, and bring dessert.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

We're going nowhere and doing nothing other than making Turkey. Which is about right. Maybe to be multicultural I'll make some of my Butternut Squash Curry.

Most challenging aspect? Being interesting enough to keep the kids from taking off the second the meal is done to hang out with their vastly more interesting friends....

Thanksgiving is always the annual reunion of hubby's family at his youngest brother's house near Andover. It's a fairly big family, and we all love being together.

The challenging part for me? It's totally banal: I am the Amazon at those gatherings among all my size 2 or 4 petite, lovely, bird-boned sisters-in-law! In my own bio family, the men are 6'2" and taller, the women 5'8" and up, and we are broad-shouldered, long-limbed, with big hands and feet, tending to that aging-jock weight gain in middle age -- your basic mesomorphs, all of us.

I know, I know -- Thanksgiving is not about me. I do try to get over it. :-)

Oh, and I wanted to respond to some of the readers about my suggestion that gay people not wait for the government to acknowledge their relationships. The response was that it wasn't enough to just go ahead, that not having full marriage rights makes the relationship precarious.

I want to apologize if it seemed like I was saying that a roll-your-own marriage was sufficient. I know it's not. I think it's important that we all work for full marital rights.

At the same time, it's also important to remember that depending on the government for anything isn't a winning strategy. Governments by definition are only marginally helpful at best in people's everyday life, and should always be viewed with intense skepticism. I may be a liberal but I agree with the Libertarian position that when someone says "I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help" that it's rarely a good thing.

When my friends Krista and Michelle had their baby, in order to allow Michelle parental rights, a social worker had to visit her house. Does that happen to straight couples? More to the point, if straight people had to prove their suitability as parents, how many would fail?

I will be spending Thansgiving in New York. The challenge is I will have to come back to California.

Ok, since we have a non-traditional Thanksgiving (though, let's face it - not much can be considered traditional these days), I thought I would share. First off, I too go home for Thanksgiving, but my home is in Germany. Second, I only do so to keep my mother from reeling off the deep end as she prepares a dinner for 25 family friends. Let me tell you, them Germans lurve their Butterball. My nuclear family couldn't care less: we're vegetarians!

Years ago my parents discovered that this was the perfect way of buying themselves out of other dinner invitations. So, while their friends aspired to trump one another by taking things to an ever higher levels of the culinary arts, my folks stick to the classics: walnut soup, waldorff salad, turkey and the works, two kinds of pumpkin pie.

What this means, is that we have numerous Thanksgiving dinners at my house: one in November and one in January, for different groups of parental friends and colleagues. My father has now taken to inviting his young female colleagues to 'help' him cook..or rather admire his skills with a turkey.

The most challenging thing? Keeping my mother from wanting to kill my father, because he is disrupting the fine-tuned machine that is her two-day cooking/slaving ritual, by making turkey-basting a spectator sport.

Despite the craziness, I love it still. And to bring together yesterday's thread and today's code word: guess who I am bringing to dinner? Two gay couples who are GETTING MARRIED. IN ENGLAND. In 2007. Happy, happy, Turkey day!

i'm headed to boston for a blessed week with my folks! thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and the challenge this year is that i'm not doing the big meal. for the first time in ages, we're having dinner at the home of some dear friends. sure, i'll make dessert. but the penny dropped with my dad some time last week that we won't have leftovers, that i won't be padding around the kitchen in pjs for two days making the whole house smell divine...and all because our USUAL challenge of keeping mom out of the kitchen became too much last year. my gut tells me that we'll have to suck it up next year.

safe travels everyone!

oh - I forgot. One half of each of those couples is AMERICAN...taking their rights abroad.

Where: Claverack.
Problems: getting our two year old to wear cold weather gear. We're in comfy November Tejas weather right now: 70's and sunny.

going to wrightsville beach where the biggest challenge will be eating 4 surfer dogs with chili at the trolley stop!

Prague for Thanksgiving. The challenges: Will it be outrageously cold and/or can you still carry-on mini bottles?

We will be with friends, reproducing Bon Appetit recipes, much to my joy. Too many years of family dinners, and since all family lives within 30 miles, have decided to spend holidays with friends and avoid terrible MIL food. (Velveeta mac-n-cheese, etc.) Challenge: avoiding the guilt of carrying through above plan. They thought last year was a one-time aberration.

We are going to Dallas and Bowie,Texas. Our challenge will be making Ben stay in his car seat on the plane now that he is 2 and needs a seat. He has had the run of the row on previous flights so I have no idea if even Elmo can tame the tantrums of a constrained 2 year old. On the positive side, we get to chase armadillos at his grandparents house instead of our boring NC squirrels.

We're having Thanksgiving dinner with friends in Chapel Hill. I've been asked to bring a sidedish and that simple request is already waking me in the wee hours. You see, the reason my son eats grilled cheese for dinner isn't just because he's four years old. I really can't cook. I can make jambalaya and about two other dishes equally inappropriate for Thanksgiving. So, I'll probably pick up something from A Southern Season and everyone will be happy. But these domestic goddess expectations always frustrate me. Why is it expected that I know how to whip up a sidedish? Why can't I be expected to sit in a Lazy-boy and watch the football game? That I could do.

This is to Kent....in response to your last paragragh. Yes straight couples do have to do this...it's the way this country handles adoptive couples. We had multiple visits by a social worker to make sure we were acceptable parents pre and post adoption. I always wondered how many people would (and should) be denied parental rights if it were required to have home inspections,interviews, and background checks before they were allowed to leave the hospital with their biological children. I get that it is a safeguard for kids being placed for adoption. What I don't get is the assumption that biological parents are above these checkpoints.

This will be our last Thanksgiving without the next generation thanks to Lee and Suzanne!!! We'll be here in Raleigh eating way too much!

We'll be carrying on my own parent's tradition of eating two Thanksgiving meals and schlepping children across county lines. My folks know how miserable this is because they used to do the very same thing when I was little. And yet they insist on having a big Thanksgiving meal the same day my husband's family is having a big Thanksgiving meal. They preempt our protests by saying things like, "we paid our dues, now it's your turn." Yes, I know we could be more assertive and state that we're choosing only one, or alternate years, etc. etc. But there will be a time when our folks won't be here anymore, and I'll regret not splitting up my day.

Interestingly enough (or not - ha), growing up, I used to HATE Thanksgiving. We moved away from the rest of our family (in Kansas) when I was 6 to NC, and so Thanksgiving became the most depressing holiday of the year. While everyone else was seeing grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, My mom and dad and I were staring across the kitchen table at each other, listening to the clock tick in the living room.

pass the potatoes, please!

I was also going to respond to Kent and tell you about my visit last week with our social worker. She happens to think we are lovely parents but the state still requires multiple pre- and post-adoption visits from her to our (straight parents) household, because my son was not born to us (and lucky for him since he's much better looking!) but to a woman in Ethiopia who could not continue to be his mom.

My son is so incredible that visits with social workers are well worth the state endorsement of him as my son.

I get your point, but know that all straight couples are not immune from social worker visits. It's what's required when a child is not your biological relative.

headed to Charlotte; biggest challenge will be not recreating Kevin Spacey's dinner table scene in American Beauty

We're staying here in the OC and Matt's parents are flying in from L.I. We will also have an elderly uncle who lives in LA, and my housekeeper and her 13 y.o. daughter. Guilt seems to be a common theme here, and I fear I too will feel that on T-day. I worry I will feel guilty for all that I have, when some of my guests have so little. I think we're very generous to Diana, but is it enough?

I just have to say that Lucy has the most magnificent mesmerizing blue eyes I've ever seen!

We always gather at our sugarcane farm about 60 miles southwest of N.O. near Thibodaux. My grandfather bought it in the l930s and it has been the heart of our family ever since. We will be about 50 family members and various in-laws who dare to join us for late afternoon Thanksgiving dinner. It's a very relaxed day with wonderful aromas coming from the different houses as we all prepare our specialties to add to the feast. This is one of the few times that our entire family (my Mom, 2 brothers, two sisters, their wives and husbands, 17 nieces and nephews, 4 children and son-in-law, and granddaughter Lucy) gets to be together, though we will be missing 2 Eustises whose schedules don't permit them to come home, and a nephew who is in Iraq. I love this day because having 4 generations sharing a wonderful meal in this beautiful place is the most perfect reminder of what I have to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving/pre-Christmas is in Brighton, Iowa on the grandparents farm - a six hour drive, but I've been doing it for 12 years or so, so no big deal there.

In years past, dealing with the potential homophobia of some extended family members has been a problem, but now that I and the girlfriend have moved in together and we've attended Thanksgiving two previous years together, everyone's used to us. Besides, Grandma likes my girlfriend, and what Grandma Says Goes, so no one is likely to say anything.

MENU:
North Shore L.I. free range grouse/pheasant (some of these fowl were formerly suburban pets)

Beer-Can Yard-Raised Canadian Goose (the crappier the beer,eh,the gamier the bird)

Smoked Turkey (really the only way to go for the flava flav)

Smashed Taters (you can feel the butter)
Sweet Taters/Yummy Yams (W/& W/out mallow-clouds)
Cranberries (the real bog deal and a la White Trash style for the good folks who like a thick sliver off the can-cran-gealeds)
Stuffin'
Stuffing
side Stuffing
Pasta and Fish (I married Italian)
Stuff In!

Can tomorrow's blog topic be dessert?

i think i will be eating pickled herring for thanksgiving... i am heading to hamburg on friday and ingo and i are taking off for a few days and hiding away on some danish island in the north sea. ironically, had i stayed in kabul for thanksgiving i would be joining friends for a huuge butterball, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and the works!
i want LOTS of pictures of lucy covered in gravy!

Lucy (or, as we know her, Cucy) is the spitting image of Sandy Blake in that picture.

I will be in NYC, as usual. For a week. Aside from the cold (I've gotten used to this lovely SF Bay Area weather) I feel like the most challenging part this year is going to be feeling oddly lonely in New York. For some reason, it is hitting me really hard this year that I seem to make this trek alone all of the time. I wish I were bringing a partner, or even a friend. Also, many of my old NY pals leave the city just when I arrive each year. Or they have all moved to L.A. and work in television. So I get there and nobody's there anymore except my family. And I want more. Cranky me.