Ever since Matthew & I moved to Colorado, we have had very non-traditional Thanksgivings.
That’s mostly due to the fact that our families are back in Georgia. When we left, all of the Thanksgiving traditions we had known growing up stayed down south with them.

I remember for our first Thanksgiving in Colorado, I was very sad to not spend it with my family. We had only been out here for 5 months and I wasn’t quite used to being away from family yet – especially during the holidays. My coworker was kind enough to invite us to her family’s Thanksgiving festivities in Colorado Springs. After we had so much fun drinking wine, eating delicious food, and spending quality time with another wonderful family, I thought that maybe Thanksgiving away from family didn’t have to be so bad.

In fact, last Thanksgiving – our third Thanksgiving in Colorado – was probably one of my favorites. Or, at least one of the most memorable.
Matthew, me, and our 2 good friends spent Thanksgiving in Steamboat Springs, where we went skiing all weekend. We didn’t even plan what we were going to do for our Thanksgiving meal (which had always been the most important thing for me & my family). We ended up stopping at the grocery store on the way to our hotel and picked up a ton of microwaveable meals. There was a microwave in our hotel room, but it was a small, weak little thing (apparently not meant for Thanksgiving feasts). When we tried to heat up all of our dishes, the microwave stopped working completely. Luckily, there were more microwaves up in the lobby, so we used those to cook up the rest of our feast! We ate too much and ended the night soaking in the hot tub.

The day we were supposed to leave, it dumped snow. Roads closed and the traffic got wild, so it took us hours to get out of Steamboat. We stopped at Winter Park in hopes of getting in a powder day, but the lock to the ski rack was completely frozen, so we couldn’t even get our skis down. We ended up driving back to Denver, sad but all secretly happy to make it back safe to our warm homes. I’ll never forget that Thanksgiving.

This year, with COVID running rampant, we had yet another non-traditional Thanksgiving.
Perhaps not the most non-traditional, but certainly the quietest one yet.

The day consisted of just me, Matthew, and Latte whipping up non-traditional Thanksgiving food (breakfast sandwiches, stuffed mushrooms, seitan, pumpkin bread, and a lot of drinks), looking back & laughing at old photos, walking around the park, playing the game of Life, and ending the night watching a documentary.

While it was a strange Thanksgiving, it was a good one. And it reminded us, yet again, how thankful we are for each other and the little life we’ve made here in Colorado.

For all of you who couldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving the way you had hoped, I hope you were still able to do something to make the holiday special – whether you cooked a new dish, ordered take-out from a local spot, or simply relaxed. And most importantly, I hope you all had a memorable Thanksgiving, non-traditional or not.