9 Things Moms Are NOT Thankful For This Thanksgiving

It never fails that no matter how well a grocery list for "Thanksgiving Dinner Necessities" is planned, SOMETHING will be forgotten . . . this will inevitably lead to fighting it out with every other person who has forgotten items for their Thanksgiving feast at the grocery store, Costco, or (God help you) Walmart the night before Thanksgiving. It's basically a warm-up exercise for Black Friday, with gallons of milk and Butterball turkeys being snatched up instead of televisions and Hello Kitty sleeping bags (at 75 percent off!). Julianna shows how far she's willing to go for the best box of Stove Top stuffing in this picture.

I absolutely LOVE the Macy's Parade every Thanksgiving morning . . . I think a lot of women do. No matter how hard I try, I can never get my kids to watch more than one dance number and a few floats IF I'm lucky. I used to just watch it alone, and they would go play/wreck another part of the house, but now they complain about watching something else. NO, ANGRY LITTLE PEOPLE . . . it's YOUR fault that you can't appreciate the majesty of a ginormous Snoopy and the Rockettes. I pity you, and you will NOT play Xbox on this TV until I have had my fill! Amanda is TRYING to show her kids the importance of the biggest Hello Kitty EVER.

While cooking with the ones you love can be lots of fun at times, when you pack a bunch of women in ONE KITCHEN, things can get pretty stressful in a hurry. Tension builds as they attempt to accomplish different tasks, jockey to use the same appliances, criticize each others' spice choices, and so on . . . anyone with sense will stay far away. Moms are used to being able to kick their kids out of the kitchen, and you can't very well tell your cousins and great-aunt to JUST LEAVE in this situation . . . especially if it's not even your kitchen. Ashley gives us a peek at the madness that can occur when things get too crowded in the culinary arena.

After attempting to cook in the sweltering kitchen, dodging the other cooks, and smelling the amazing food for hours as it cooks, moms are faced with another holiday-feasting blunder: the preparing of food plates for their kids. If you have multiple kids, as I do, you can forget making your own plate at the same time as you prepare theirs, which means you will likely miss out on some of the most delicious dishes. After trying to fill their plates with items you KNOW they will eat (turkey, macaroni and cheese, rolls) and adding a few things that you WISH they would eat (lima beans, cranberry sauce, broccoli salad) and delivering the plates to their impatient selves, Mom will get back in line to prepare HER plate from the scraped casserole dishes and rolls that have gone lukewarm. Alyson beautifully captures my feelings about this portion of the event in this picture.

After busting your butt in the kitchen for hours, finally getting to eat the food on your plate (amid handling kid requests for drinks, etc.), the time to share the pumpkin pie that you baked with love has arrived. As you walk into the dining room to serve it to the rest of the family, you notice that half of the table's occupants have gone elsewhere. The slamming front door tells you all that you need to know . . . those jerks have left before dessert to hit up the Thanksgiving DAY sales! Deva shows us this hideous indignity in her photo. Please know that chasing them down the block, pie in hand, is perfectly acceptable, and if you catch them, feel free to slam that pie in their faces . . . dessert to-go.

After the rest of the family has retreated to watch TV, leaving a wake of napkins, forks, and crumbs behind them, it's now evident that the dishes must be done . . . but these are the dishes that can't be put in the good ole dishwasher. You only use these plates a couple of times each year, but these treasured gifts from your wedding day have now become an albatross that you must bear. Even though you don't want to wash the china, you do it to prevent someone else from doing it carelessly or incompletely (i.e., WRONG).

Audrey gives us a peek at this Mom-reality in her photo.

After carefully hand-washing the china and consolidating the remaining food into storage containers, it's time for the Mom-in-charge to play Refrigerator Tetris. Somehow, most of the ingredients used to cook the Thanksgiving meal all managed to fit in the same refrigerator 12 hours before, but now it's like stuffing your body back into your pants after pigging out on the bounty at hand. Meredith shows us the exhaustion that occurs after enduring a battle of strength with the Fridge of Doom.

Having friends and family over to reminisce and make new memories over a delicious meal is a treasured occasion each Thanksgiving, but there always comes a time when it's time for all guests to leave . . . and at times, it's more difficult than extracting a toddler from the Frozen display in Target to get them the heck out of your house. You don't want to be rude, because, obviously, they're your friends and family and you'll probably want to see them again at Christmas . . . but Mama needs wine (or scotch) and silence NOW!

This can be the antidote to the guests who refuse to leave issue . . . anyone who has ever had a toddler who ate table foods knows that when small children eat things they aren't used to eating, powerful gastric upsets can and WILL occur. Some of the worst diapers I've ever changed have been after holiday meals. Moms get the pleasure of seeing the complete cycle of the Thanksgiving meal . . . from the grocery store where they fought for its ingredients to the foul Pampers that contain the remnants of processed turkey and dressing. Sarah shows the lengths to which moms may have to go to deal with the nuclear fallout from post-Thanksgiving toddler waste.