What are your plans for Thanksgiving?

Have you already made your plans for Thanksgiving? Do you have a family tradition that you follow every year? Do you do the cooking, or do you travel to another family member's house and they do the cooking? Or is Thanksgiving just another day and you don't do anything special?

My earliest memories of Thanksgiving include a giant golden brown turkey coming in off of the grill, and all the trimmings. My dad has really mastered grilled turkey his are the BEST! My mom used to make stuffing with the giblets all chopped up (ewww!). She found a new recipe, several years ago, that I just LOVE and could eat it all by itself and be quite happy.

It is pretty easy to make. It has seasoned bread crumbs, browned up ground turkey sausage (with some chopped onion and celery), chicken broth, sliced water chestnuts and slices fresh mushrooms. I never measure when I make this, I just dump it all in the baking pan, mix it up and bake it and it is wonderful! Lots of great flavors and textures.

We will be having our dinner with my parents, grandparents, a friend of Adam's, and a couple of neighbor friends of my parents. There should be 13 or 14 of us for dinner.

I just hope I don't end up with the same Thanksgiving gift I got last year...a speeding ticket! I was bringing my grandparents to my parents house, and was pulled over on a long deserted road in a county that has such little traffic that there isn't even a traffic light in the whole county! Leave it to me to get a ticket! I didn't even realize I was driving that fast! We were just talking away and catching up, and there he was -and he wasn't there to wish us a Happy Thanksgiving!

Afterward, my family had a lot of fun at my expense at the dinner table. With comments like, "Could you pass the mashed potatoes...but not to fast!", or "You don't want to eat to fast...you might get indigestion." or "Watch the gravy...it comes out fast!" and so on and so on for the whole meal, and pretty much throughout the whole weekend. It was all pretty funny and it made for lots of laughs. That little ticket was $120-I've learned my lesson, I set the cruise control on that road now!

Do you ever go shopping on Black Friday? I used to go quite a bit when the boys were younger. I've gotten some really awesome bargains on Black Friday, but now that they are older, they like to just get money as their gift and pick out their own stuff. Plus when we go to my parents, it is about an hour and a half drive to the nearest decent stores so far I haven't found anything that is worth getting up at the wee hours (or staying up all night) for.

I'd love to hear about your Thanksgiving plans and traditions! I'll be checking back to see what you have to say!