Traditions

Okay, it's time for me to stop kvetching about the fact that I'm never with my extended family on holidays. Instead, I need to start building traditions with my kids so that when they are grown up with families, they'll come home for holidays.
When I think of Thanksgiving as a kid, I remember my mom in the kitchen while I watched the Thanksgiving parade on television. Sometimes we went to my grandmother's house in Kentucky and we'd play with the cousins. Nana always had stackcake, which was my favorite (or maybe I'm confusing that with Christmas).
Right, so back to Thanksgiving traditions. My parents are in Florida, one brother is in Texas and another brother spends every Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day at his in-laws. That leaves my husband's family. This year, they are doing a run and then going to their in-laws for a 4 p.m. meal We wedged out a tiny block of time for a Thanksgiving brunch.
Then Earl will go to work in the evening. Grace is still in France, so it will be me and two teenage boys at home.
I came up with one possible tradition to add from reading Corey's blog. Corey has an amazingly close-knit family that makes me so jealous. She lives in France, but she is home in California for Thanksgiving. She talked about her mother baking cookies and showed a cookie cutter of a turkey.
Eureka! I have a turkey cookie cutter from my Mom.
So my husband mixed up the dough for the cut out cookies this morning while I was at work. Tomorrow, I can roll and cut out the cookies shaped like turkeys.
The boys and I will probably go to a movie on Thanksgiving, but if Grace was home, she would not go for that. She's very traditional. She would insist on family games probably.
So, any suggestions for Thanksgiving traditions?