Thanksgiving Sign-up Spreadsheet

Hi! So two years ago, the girls were still in the hospital during Thanksgiving. It was a really hard/frustrating time (to say the least) because we thought they would have been home LONG before that. (If you’re not familiar with our NICU story, you catch up starting here and here!) Because we couldn’t necessarily leave town for Thanksgiving like we normally would, my whole family came here. At the time, I honestly wasn’t stressed about them being here or hosting the dinner. I felt honored that they would go through the expense and effort to come, and any stressed/sad feelings I had were coming from the fact that my babies were still in the hospital!!!

NICU Thanksgiving 2017 — Me holding the girls in the NICU on Thanksgiving in 2017, before going home to host Thanksgiving Dinner. (Click here for the caption I posted with this photo on Instagram)

However, in an effort to take back whatever control I could of the things actually within my power, I created a Thanksgiving Spreadsheet. Everybody had offered to help with dinner, so it was an easy way for them to sign up for dishes. I took care of the turkey and let them do all of the side dishes and desserts. I also included an oven schedule so no one ended up without oven time. Since they were all coming from out of town, I had them also write the items/ingredients they needed on the grocery list and purchased or ordered everything ahead of time. The second tab on the sheet includes a schedule, which was helpful to know everyone’s arrival and departure times and plan other meals and activities around when they’d be here. (At the time it was especially helpful to work around visits to the hospital and the girls’ schedule, too!)

This year, we are hosting again, but WITH Romy and Piper. I am SO thankful! I decided to do the spreadsheet again, because my family all wants to help and because well, ya know, #twoyearoldtwins. I was working on it while at Pelican Hill on Friday and posted it on my stories. I got so many messages from people who said they wanted it, so here it is! You can download it here.

I copied this spreadsheet into Google drive spreadsheets, and then literally just text the link out to my family from the pool at Pelican Hill. They’re already signing up. So easy!