In recent years we’ve traveled the 750 miles from our Kansas City home to our Knoxville home for Thanksgiving.  Gathering with our large and growing family has always been the highlight of our holidays.  The gregarious roughhousing of uncles, the endless card games, the grand dogs, the grand kids… it’s what holidays were made for.  This year however, our little family will spend Thanksgiving at our home.   We will cook our own turkey, we will try to mimic Grandpa’s meat pie and Aunt Annie’s cranberries.  We will miss the hours of appetizers and folding chairs and noise. While I am looking forward to the lack of travel, I am saddened by the lack of family.

Moving so far from home has always been a bittersweet endeavor.   It has challenged me to create a community, a giant family for my little family.   As Thanksgiving began looming and a weekend of quite little family became daunting and lonely I began searching for a way to celebrate big family, though we are far from home.  We wanted to thank those friends and neighbors for welcoming us, for serving us, and for gathering with us when home is so far away.   I am so very Thankful for my Kansas City framily.  (thanks Sprint for that fantastic word, it is used often in this life.)

Pie is both the pinnacle and the afterthought of Thanksgiving.  We each have our favorite, and no Thanksgiving meal is complete without a slice or two.  But if you are like me, by the time the pie is served, I’m done with food.  I can’t enjoy the beautiful chocolate-pecan masterpiece because of the all the mashed potatoes and cranberries and Jell-O salad.  The turkey and the meat pie and five hours of appetizers have taken all the joy away from the pie.   This year we promise to put pie in its proper place at the proverbial head of the table.  So Pie night was born.

This year we are opening our home for a few hours on Thanksgiving Eve.  We are inviting all those amazing people who have had such a beautiful impact on our Kansas City lives.  The premise is quite simple – Put Pie First.

How to Host A Pie Night
1.     Every family brings a pie in a throw away container
2.     When the pie arrives ½ of it is cut and plated.
3.     The other ½ is placed on a take away table.

We will all eat more than one piece of pie and drink more than one fabulous holiday drink.  We will laugh and watch kids run through the house all hyped up on sugar.  We will sit by the fire and share holiday stories.  We will mingle and meet new people who are linked together with the common thread of framily.  When each family leaves they will take a leftover or two to their Thanksgiving table.  On Thanksgiving Day, when our little family eats ½ of someone else’s pie, I will be reminded that our little family is part of a much bigger family.  I will be so thankful that our little family isn’t quite so little anymore.