This year instead of spending Thanksgiving with my husband’s family’s annual gathering of around 30 people, we found ourselves out in Seattle welcoming our newest granddaughter. Since it was a small gathering of four adults and three kids (one who was only going to “taste” what Mommy consumed) we got a small turkey and stuffed it and whittled down the side dishes to just our favorites—mashed potatoes/gravy, green bean casserole, onion casserole, sweet potatoes, and of course cranberry sauce from a can. My son insisted on the canned sauce since that was what he remembered from his childhood whenever his grandmother (my mom) or I served it. He had to explain to his six- and two and a half-year old children what it was.

For the first time in about 40 years, I cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out to be a lot of fun and very entertaining for little TJ who carried his step stool from the bathroom all the way into the kitchen to step up to the sink and peek inside the turkey before it was stuffed. Then, when the bird went into the oven, he pushed the stool over to the oven door, turned on the light, and sat down to watch it roast.

While our large family gathering is nice at Thanksgiving, I realized that it can often exclude the little ones. With a busy kitchen full of cooks, there is no place for small children to catch a glimpse of the preparations. No opportunity to poke the turkey and find out it has funny skin.

This year, let the grands into your holiday preparations if you can. Christmas is around the corner and those cookies are a great way to let them help out. Bake some memories. If you’re like me and don’t like the mixing, buy some premade dough. It’s available for sugar cookies you can roll out and cut. And this year I even see gingerbread dough for those tasty little gems.

Gingerbread houses now come prepackaged and even my husband can put one together. We assembled one at our son’s home and let big sis decorate the front while TJ stuck M&Ms on the back. They are eagerly waiting to pick it apart the day after Christmas and devour the pieces.

What do you have planned to do with your grands this year to prepare for the birthday celebration of Jesus? Baking? Homemade gifts? Caroling? It doesn’t take a lot of planning to do a little something special to make that trip “over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house” a memorable event.

Copyright © 2009 by Karen Robbins Share