A New Tradition, An Old Tradition

Today flew by! It's amazing how a day off work goes so quickly!

For tomorrow's dinner with my family, I am in charge of bringing Apple Sauce & Apple Pie [which I assume I am not to buy and bring!] and I also volunteered my Apple Bread :) Somehow, I see, for as long as we live on an orchard, this possibly becoming tradition that I am the one who brings the Apple Filled Foods!

I used the red fleshed apples we have for my homemade Apple Sauce and I must say, it is dang good :) Even my husband had a pleasantly shocked look on his face when I saw him taste it!

I'll pop the apple pie in the oven tomorrow morning. Half that battle is already over since I have my Homemade Apple Pie filling canned and ready for use!

And last, but not least, I baked up some of my 'Homemadefromscratch' Apple Bread :) This makes my whole house smell wonderful as it bakes. It takes some time to whip up, but it's well worth it. I wanted to simmer a crock pot of apple butter to can in the morning too, but I was bummed because I was out of a few ingredients and just didn't have the energy to go to the store and get them!

I am excited to taste the full spread tomorrow. Mom has to work during the day so Kyle is in charge of the Turkey and sides! He's a good cook so I am happy to try it out!

To close out my to-do list today, I wrapped our BINGO gifts! Bingo gifts you say? Well, ever since I was little, we always played BINGO on Thanksgiving at my Great Grandmothers house. This is a tradition that goes back to the days when my dad was a kid at Great Grandma Kulon's (his grandma). One of his great Uncles I believe it was, decided to play BINGO to keep all the kids occupied. It turned into a yearly tradition where everyone coming to Grandma Kulon's on Thanksgiving would bring some BINGO gifts, wrapped [usually in Xmas paper] and marked with a description of 'boy', 'girl', 'adult', 'anyone', or some even were marked 'Grandma' and we all knew those were usually paper plates or paper towels! Why she always got that, I have no idea, since she'd set out her finest dishes for mobs of people to dine on!

One year, myself or maybe it was one of my sisters, got a BINGO gifts that was two brass seagulls! I guess they were supposed to be a wall decoration, but to young kids, it seemed more like someone who robbed their attic because they had no time to go pick up some BINGO gifts at the store. We laughed about the brass seagulls for years to come and they became an inside joke!

After Grandma Kulon passed and the tradition of going to her house on the holidays was no longer, we still carried on the traditions, including BINGO, with our immediate family and grandparents. And of course, those brass seagulls show up every year as one of the BINGO gifts! We even somehow managed to get a second gag BINGO gift in the mix now too; this one rock hard, age old Peanut Brittle, that crazy Aunt 'Darla' won one year, opened, and ate a piece! I had the honor of wrapping that beauty up for this years BINGO so those who dare play, chose your gifts carefully!!