It was our third Thanksgiving in Portugal, but the first in our very own house. Experiencing a very American tradition is a bit of an odd thing when living in a different country, not to mention that some expats’ relationship to holidays and their homeland can be a bit complicated. Some are homesick and missing friends, family and times of old, and some vociferously eschew participating in any American holiday. What about us? We fall somewhere in the middle. We don’t decorate the house with American flags and wear red, white, and blue for the 4th of July, but we love getting together with friends for lively conversation, good food, and board games if our guests like that sort of thing.

I might have gotten overly excited about having the space to cook a big celebratory meal. I frequently say that in a previous life I must have cooked for a crowd. A lack of food in our household is a rare event, especially for a party, and knowing my penchant for cooking way too much for two people, we invited Corinne and Randy from Coimbra to join us. They hadn’t visited Guimarães before and decided to make it a 3 day trip.

I dug out my seasonal decor which I hadn’t used in over 2 years, and we started menu planning. Andrew chose recipes for the turkey, a vegetable side, bread rolls, and dessert. I filled in the remaining dishes for the main event, and also picked appetizers and snacks to quell any hunger pains we might have later in the evening. My favorite new addition to the meal this year was Stuffing Muffins, perfect single serving bundles that have just the right amount of crunchy bits on the outside. They looked great and tasted awesome.

We had a bountiful lunch, and post meal started a two day board game extravaganza. Our guests are great sports and we played a huge variety of games. We have recently been playing a lot of 2 player Dominoes when we don’t have guests, and it was fun to mix it up with 4 player Mexican Train, and Rummikub. We played some silly party games including Making Bad Situations Worse, and Dirty Minds, and the latter had all of us laughing hysterically. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. We busted out some light strategy games with Ticket to Ride (I sat out of this one in order to facilitate appetizers on night 2), and Codenames. We even found time to play our all time favorite card game Tichu; we love it so much, but you need exactly 4 people to play.

Our guests were such great company, and we reminisced about how far we have all come since first meeting back in Jackson County, Oregon. Thanksgiving was so fun and festive that I can barely wait for Christmas.