We have always been clear that that our married children have two sides to their new families and we have also made it clear that while we may invite them to everything we also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to hog their time or force them into difficult choices. <\/p>\n
About twelve years ago I surveyed all our children to see who was coming for Thanksgiving. EVERYONE except our then youngest and unmarried son had other plans. So we settled in for the smallest and quietest Thanksgiving ever at our house. I bought one small turkey breast and a small amount of other fixings. Then about 10 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving one son called saying their plans had fallen through and asking if they could come to our house. Of course! That added four people, and a much a more festive feeling and we still had plenty of food. At 7:30 on Thanksgiving morning another son called. Their plans had also fallen through, followed over the next two hours by another son and our daughter and their families\u00e2\u20ac\u201dOh! My! It was by then too late to thaw a turkey and fresh ones were unavailable (besides we always eat around one.) We scrambled and had plenty of everything else, but the turkey was rationed with not a speck leftover.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should not have been surprised. One of the challenges of this stage of our lives is trying to figure out how many people (and who) we might be feeding at any given time. Our grocery bill has not decreased a dime since everyone left. In self-defense I have said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you can find it you can eat it (and clean up after) but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not cooking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (except for special events.) Otherwise with our constantly revolving door, I would be cooking all the time.<\/p>\n
With less than 15 hours to Thanksgiving dinner, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still not sure what is happening this year. Three clear possibilities are before us. 1\u00e2\u20ac\u201dMy husband and I will be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alone together\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, for the first time ever on Thanksgiving. (ALL of our children have already told us they are going elsewhere.) 2\u00e2\u20ac\u201dThere may yet be a repeat of the family story above, or 3\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe invited several young couples from our ward to join us, but haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t heard anything back from anyone for sure\u00e2\u20ac\u201dso\u00e2\u20ac\u201dperhaps our children AND ward members will ALL show up. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have always been clear that that our married children have two sides to their new families and we have also made it clear that while we may invite them to everything we also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to hog their time or force them into difficult choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}