Anticipating Thanksgiving always reminds me of our disastrous holiday years ago when our kids were just starting their families. There were eight of us so we always rotated the site of our celebration with each of us contributing part of the meal. My daughter, June, had just moved into her brand new home and had her first baby who was five months old. She had so much to be thankful for, she insisted we have dinner at her house. She refused to let us help with the meal and said she would prepare all of it even though she had never done it before.

The day arrived as did all the family, spouses and parents. June promised her dad she'd make him his favorite pies ‹ chocolate cream and an apple pie.

There were also the traditional pumpkin pies.

We walked into the kitchen crowded with food she'd prepared and the turkey roasting in the oven. The baby began to fuss so his dad took him out of the high chair and put him in the swing. If you can picture the old swings, they were not as efficient as those of today. It pacified the baby for a while, but he still fussed. Jane proudly showed her dad the beautiful chocolate pie and the apple pie she had made specifically for him. She laid them on the tray of the baby's high chair and continued cooking.

The baby excitedly bounced up and down in the swing. It suddenly flipped over and he was hanging upside down with his feet in the air and his head on the floor, screaming and terrified. Pandemonium hit when everyone dashed to help, while June hysterically tried to rescue her child.

She finally calmed the baby and put him down for a nap, returning to the meal preparation. Everyone was crowding around, excitedly discussing the near disaster. Breathing a sigh of relief, she returned to the stove.

Someone brushed up against the high chair, the tray obviously had not been fastened, so both pies landed on the flood upside down. There was dead silence and then a gasp. June went to pieces completely, tears pouring down her face as she dashed off to the bedroom. While her husband tried to console her, the rest of us hurriedly finished putting the meal together.

We ended the day with a wonderful meal. Her dad assured her that her pies were wonderful as he had insisted on tasting them before cleaning up the mess. We often relive this laughable event. Needless to say, she has never again offered to prepare a meal alone.

My wife's family was expecting about 10 relatives for Thanksgiving dinner, so they had purchased a very large turkey, enough to feed the crowd. The day before Thanksgiving, her mother placed the frozen turkey in a large pan and set it on a table in their screened in patio area, so it could thaw.

Her mother got up about 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning to begin preparing the turkey, only to discover it was missing from the pan on the patio table.

Thinking someone had broken in and stolen it, she awoke the rest of the family. They began to search the house to find if anything else was missing and to see if they could find out how the house was entered.

While checking the door on the patio, my wife found it was locked, but when she turned to re-enter the house, she noticed something in a dark corner of the room. A closer look revealed the neighbor's cat Miss Kitty hovering over a well chewed on turkey.

Mystery solved? Not quite! They never did figure out how the cat got into the patio, or how it managed to lift the turkey from the pan and move it to the corner of the room, when the turkey was nearly three times the size of the cat.

Not unlike the family in "A Christmas Story," when the relatives arrived, they all went out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner.

At the age of 90, many memories of Thanksgiving dinners, both happy and sad come to mind ‹ even an embarrassing one that was of may making.

Early in my married life, I was asked to furnish the pies for our Thanksgiving dinner for a family gathering of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, dad, husband and my two children.

Early Thanksgiving morning, I was up making cherry pies from my home-canned cherries. This was in Michigan and one of the world cherry capitals, so naturally that was the favorite pie and was expected instead of pumpkin.

They all seemed to have turned out perfectly as I took them from the oven.

At the end of the Thanksgiving meal, I beamingly served the pie. As we ate we discovered they were full of cherry pits. How did this happen? My mother had taught me to can fruits and vegetables and had suggested leaving a "few" pits in the cherries I would use for sauce as they supposedly enhanced the flavor. I did not remember the word "few" when canning and all the pits were left in the ones for sauce. Mistakenly, those are the cherries I used. All declared they were the most tasty pies as we continually spit out pits.

Sixty-five years later, it is still the highlight of conversation at our family gathering.

Back in the early 1960s, in a small town in Nebraska, married with two small boys, life was very good. Being it was Thanksgiving, I decided to invite all the in-laws over for our first Thanksgiving dinner at our house. The guests were to arrive around 1 p.m. with dinner planned at 2.

The turkey was placed in the oven at 8 a.m., and the remainder of the morning was spent preparing the rest of the meal. As the in-laws were starting to arrive at the appropriate hour, I went to the oven to remove the top foil so the turkey could brown. To my astonishment the turkey was not done, in fact it looked like it had not cooked at all. Yes, I did turn the oven on!

After a little investigating it was determined that due to my being a clean freak and completely lining the oven with foil so it would not get dirty, prevented the oven from getting hot enough to cook the turkey. After another three hours of family bonding we all sat down to a very lovely Thanksgiving dinner.

A good time was had by all. Of course every time the family gets together for Thanksgiving, my first Thanksgiving dinner is always the topic of conversation, and of course the story always gets a little better each time.