Every Girl Link-up: Thanksgiving Traditions

Whoa,  I wasn't really prepared for this link-up.  Didn't we link-up last week?  Anyways this is a post on the fly!  Sharing Thanksgiving Traditions with Astleigh and Rachel.

So this is technically Dan and my fourth Thanksgiving together.  The first year Dan went upstate to spend time with cousins and since we had only been dating two months I stayed in the city.  My friend won tickets to the Macy's Day parade and we had seats right by the performers.  It was a once in a lifetime experience and I will likely never attend it again.  I'll have to share more about that at some point.  We had to be in our bleacher seats at 6 am on the parade day and it was COLD.  The parade in my jim-jams is much more comfortable.

Our second Thanksgiving together, was mere weeks after our engagement and my first time meeting Dan's extended family.  It was a lot of fun and we helped Terri Mom and Allen Dad decorate for Christmas.

Last year, our first holiday season as a married couple, we hosted Thanksgiving at our apartment and my parents and Mandy came to town to celebrate with us.

This year we will be back in Kansas to join Dan's family traditions.  While we are still without kids and traveling is "easy" we are rotating Thanksgiving and Christmas between both families.  This makes it a little bit difficult to create our own traditions since we are in different places every year.  But that's okay because we can share in each others childhood traditions.

For me, like I already shared last week, jellied cranberry sauce is essential.  It needs to be sliced...that's why the can rim is imprinted on the cranberry sauce right?  My other tradition is pumpkin pie.  Mandy and I always ate it by eating all the pumpkin filling from our slice first and leaving the pie crust to enjoy by itself at the end.  Yummm pie crust.  If no one is watching, I still eat my pie this way.  Also, leftovers are my  tradition.  Cold pumpkin pie for breakfast and turkey sandwiches for lunch, with a slice of cranberry sauce in the sandwich.  Yes, I know, I'm weird.  BYOR!

For Dan, he loves pickled herring on crackers.  It's like a Thanksgiving appetizer at his Grandma's house.  I actually kind of like it too.  We typically only have herring in Kansas.  It is ultra expensive here.  He also said it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes and gravy. 

The one "couples" tradition we have is to decorate our apartment for Christmas the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Super excited for this!