It was a marathon, not a sprint.

When I woke up on Thursday and read this tweet, “Happy ‪#Thanksgiving Day!! Re-tweet this post if you're already up and cooking.” As usual, Southern Living couldn’t have said it better. And at precisely 8:01 a.m., I “retweeted” like many other productive folks and went back to my cooking.

The truth is, my Thanksgiving planning and preparing began many days and even weeks ago as I talked over menus and schedules with my parents. This year marked the only the second time in my family’s history that Thanksgiving was not done at my parent’s or my grandparent’s house. The first was when my mother was 7-months pregnant with me and my wonderful aunt (and fabulous hostess) made them dinner. In other words, Thursday was a really big deal.

My actual cooking started on Wednesday when I whipped up this Southern Living macaroni and cheese.

The mac and cheese got a teeny bit burned.

I make a few different ones but in an effort to save some time and energy, I decided to for-go making homemade breadcrumbs to sprinkle on top. I also made a homemade pumpkin pie along with whipped cream from scratch.

Pumpkin pie is one of my favorite treats.

Everything else was homemade and prepared with care. Among the many things that I am grateful for, I feel especially blessed to have two wonderful parents who enjoy cooking and baking as much as me.