Thanksgiving 2020

I usually hate when traditions change or die off and I always used to love an excuse for a family gathering but this year most of our holidays have been altered. Easter, 4th of July, Halloween and now Thanksgiving haven't been like the years past but despite restrictions or safety measures I love that the holidays can still bring a sense of togetherness within our own homes. We've made the most of these days and I know it won't be like this forever but I think I'll look back at the holidays of 2020 and remember how special we still made it with just the five of us. I'm extra thankful for my husband and our children and any excuse to make our day to day even more exciting. 

This Thanksgiving we celebrated as just our own little family and it was probably one of our favorite ones ever. It would have been my side of the family's turn this year but because of all the restrictions in place it just wouldn't have felt like the same. For example, everyone had to wear masks (even inside my parents house) unless eating and all of the individual family groups would be seated in separate locations of the house away from other families/households. So it just didn't sound like it would be worth it to drive an hour to South Jordan just to be separated as our own little family anyway and it would take away the visiting that usually takes place between my siblings or my parents. I am proud of my parents however for complying with the government and trying to modify it so that the family can at least be under the same roof. Earlier this month we had the executive order in place so we already started pre planning what a home Thanksgiving would look like for us. The order was lifted this week but heavy caution was still recommended and with me having a high risk pregnancy we decided to keep our plans of staying safe at home. In addition, my kids aren't the best eaters when we're at someone else's house because it's too exciting and there's too many distractions; plus it would have been hard to tell them that they couldn't interact with their cousins or grandparents. With all this in mind we decided to experience our first ever stay at home Thanksgiving meal and Danny couldn't have been more excited. He's been wanting to try a full on homemade Thanksgiving feast for years and I always thought our first try at it would be when we possibly move out of state for his post doc. I didn't think that our first year was in fact this year but it all turned out wonderfully. Our kids even ate everything on their plates! Which wouldn't have happened had we celebrated this day with either side of the family. On Thanksgiving pasts we've always had to go home and figure our a separate meal for our kids because they would spend the whole time playing with cousins instead. 

This year Danny was the main chef in our kitchen and he did awesome. He was in his element and was so excited to see all the food together. The only thing we forgot was to set out dough for homemade rolls but we did have store bought ones that worked just fine. I also forgot to lay out the tablecloth that I got specifically for Thanksgiving. Actually we didn't even really set it up in a fancy way at all but oh well. We also have very young kids so that wasn't the biggest deal to miss. The mashed potatoes were my favorite and from scratch and just thinking about them makes me want another helping of it. :) I did miss the visiting family aspect of it but 2020 is so weird and it sounds like that wasn't going to really happen anyway. I don't know how we'll celebrate next year but it's now nice to know that we can enjoy our own little Thanksgiving and for once our kids actually ate the dinner turkey. So that's a very huge win in our book. :)