How we celebrate Thanksgiving in Thailand

It's that time of year for family gatherings, yummy meals, and traditions.  I love the holidays.  I was really nervous about moving to Thailand and trying to figure out how I could recreate our holidays here.  I did not just want any of our holidays to be "just any old day" and be forgotten.  I didn't want to feel depressed around the holidays and I wanted to make sure the boys would have great memories of how we spent our time celebrating together. So, I began my mission of bringing the holiday season to us.

The first year was really hard.  I had no idea where to find a turkey for Thanksgiving.  My oven is the size of a small microwave.  I only have 2 burners (now only one working burner) to cook on.   Sweet potatoes are not orange here, they come in a variety of colors from purple to white to greenish-gray. There aren't any holiday specials on the TV.  How would my boys experience Thanksgiving without Charlie Brown or football? I'm kidding, but because of all of these obstacles, it made me get pretty creative.

 Britton's Mayflower

 Lincoln's Mayflower

 Greyson's Mayflower

 Cinnamon playdoh turkeys

 Lego Squanto

Pilgrim hat & Turkey

I started preparing Thanksgiving  food two weeks before the big day.  I try and make the same traditional foods that we would have back home down to my Great-grandma's dressing, sweet potato souffle, and apple pie.  It takes a lot of searching for these foods.  Grocery shopping in Thailand is like a scavenger hunt. One grocery store will not have all the ingredients you need.  I usually have to go to at least 2-3 stores to find all I need.  I managed to find all goodies for our Thanksgiving dinner.

 Cranberry smoothies & Turkey Sundaes

 Rice Crispy Turkeys

Apples & Dip

This year, we spent the week leading up to Thanksgiving with lots of crafts, themed food and movies on the topic.  I absolutely love theme food, we we had plenty of turkey themed snack this week. Thanksgiving Day is a little different here.  Ben still had school, so the boys and I had our own Thanksgiving celebration.  They even had turkey and pie for their lunch!  (This was something the boys asked for again this year after doing it last year.  The turkey had popcorn in it and the pie had a pumpkin cookie in it.)  We watched The Peanuts' Mayflower Voyagers and all discussed what we are thankful for.

The following Saturday was our family Thanksgiving celebration.  I managed to squeeze that  8 pound turkey into a tiny pan in my tiny oven.  I made way too much for the 5 of us, but at least I won't have to cook for a few days.  It was lovely spending time together as a family.  The boys cracked up over the Thanksgiving Mad Libs we worked on.  We even managed to finish off our night by watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  It was really a wonderful day.

 Lots of lego fun

Holidays require a lot of time and effort here, but I am so happy I do it.  I love that the boys are already requesting some of the activities we have done in past years.  I love that they are experiencing their own holiday traditions.  Now on to Christmas and one of my favorite traditions,The 25 Days of Christmas. If you want to see what we will be up to during the month of December, check here.