An international turkey :)

About a week (maybe less) before turkey day, my family friend, M, asked if we would like to come over and share an informal thanksgiving with her and her kids since her husband would be out of town.  I jumped at the idea having no prior plans, and not even knowing if A would be home.  I offered some food that I had in my freezer and she happily accepted, and then emailed me a little panicked because she had invited another family and the count was up to 10 people.  With 4 people, you can do informal; 10 people take a leeetle more planning.  I bought a 14lb turkey, made a couple of pies and corn bread and she made all of the sides. Our other friend brought cheese and crackers and salad.  It was fantastic.
My friend SM and her family are devout Muslims and her kids have food allergies. As someoane who followed Islamic diatary laws for years, which at one point prevented my from eating my mother's pie after I discovered there was lard in the crust; I desperately wanted a dinner that everyone could eat.  I wanted a dinner, where no child would be prevented from tasting something because it had nuts, or eggs in it.  I rolled out my dough myself, and helped create that dinner.  No, sadly my dough didn't taste as good as it would have with lard, and other crap ingrediants, but since it was only my second homemade dough, I'll give myself some time to find the perfect recipe.  I oddly enough have NO problem rolling out the dough (probably b/c of all those tortilla's I decided to hand-make when we were saving money and I had 10lbs of flour), but rather making it taste like store bought crusts.
I was a great and diverse crowd, and had plenty of hilarious moments, such as A deciding that my friend M's kids needed to experience redi-whip sprayed directly into their mouths.  The 2 yr old was excited, but scared to close her mouth, so she sat there is shock for a minute before spitting it into A's hand with all of us laughing.  The 5 kids had a great time playing together and running off all of the sugar, turkey and energy.  I enjoyed sitting at the grown up table and having very few responsibilities.  I finally felt...like an adult.
It was fitting that we have a diverse Thanksgiving, as we are a diverse group of people.  My friend M is a professed atheist, as is my husband.  I am religiously confused and my friend SM and her family are Muslim.  We all became friends during my time in WV.  M and I found out that we are related through marriage, and her kids and me share a cousin (very cool to find out!), and she was friends with SM through her kids school. I met SM independently at the local mosque where she was leading a discussion group and really liked her, and then realized she was friends with M.  I am really going to miss the small town feeling here!
It was really fun to show a family that never celebrated Thanksgiving before (SM is Canadian) and show her the traditions.  She was blown away by all the variety of food, but really enjoyed it! Her kids loved it too and cleaned their plates.

Aaron and I spent the morning sleeping, and then looking through some stores together.  While I didn't get my 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond by getting there before 10am, I did get A his big Christmas present, which I got his approval for first. Yeah, I'm bad with surprise presents, although our anniversary present of a new really nice pillow and down comforter surprised him.  We ate, and went to see Tangled--very funny movie.

What did you do this thanksgiving? Did you make any new traditions, or stick with the old?