Christmas Recap.....

JBDamonM

Lets here it ladies - how was everyone's day!?!?!

JBDamonM

My response will be long (warning)....... My Christmas with Molly was AWESOME. She was more into the Santa gifts than we thought and DH and I had a blast with her! So fun My Christmas as a whole SUCKED. I really hate this holiday, the entire meaning gets lost because people get selfish. DH and I fight every single year, but this year was an eye opening breaking point for me. We fight about making three stops. He gets mad because his one holiday with his family (Christmas Day) always winds up being shared with mine, because we have to do Christmas Morning with my mom and sisters (gift exchange)......I thought it would be fine this year as we would be up anyways with Molly. Wrong! We were having so much fun - it sucked cutting it short. DH was sompissed that we could not have our own family time that he was threatening to not go with me (over dramatic anyone).....so when we got there I told my entire family this was the last year I was doing this, they said "yeah ok, next year you just don't have to eat when you are here.....well just do gifts" and my favorite from my sister "you just need to get up earlier, I've been up since 5 AM." Um - no. Or I could just take some time for MY own family on Chrisymas. Why can't they get it? What makes this all worse? We have this argument every year, and Christmas Eve we do with my dad. And it SUcKS, and he's ungrateful and makes rude comments. So I make myself crazy and put a strain on my marriage for someone who can't appreciate it. In reality if we could do Christmas Eve with my mom and company - everything would work out. This is why I am not a fan of Christmas and glad I have another year to formulate a plan tha won't invoke fighting with my husband! Just grateful we did have some good time withiLO in the morning, even if we wanted more! Please excuse lack of paragraphs - damn iPad.

mnj05

Our Christmas has been great! We do gifts/meal with my grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins on Christmas Eve every year and it fun! H liked banging on the boxes and watching us rip them open. We did it with my parents yesterday and DH's family will be on Saturday. We did our family of three Monday night at home.

All of our family lives two hours from us (we are from the same town so everyone is within 30 miles of that area) and this will be the last year for us to be here on Christmas Day. I told DH this is very important to me that H is home Christmas Eve night so Santa can come to our house and we can enjoy our family before everyone else shows up. We will have to work out a new plan with everyone else but I told my parents and ILs that if they want to come see what H gets, they can drive to us after lunch Christmas Day. This is the one thing I will not cave on.

kmc84

JBD, I'm sorry you had a rough day with YH and family.

We had a very good day. My dad came over at 8 and we had waffles, eggs, and should have had bacon-but I forgot to cook it we opened presents and A was excited about her pony and the busy block that we got her. DH had to go to work at 2, so I went to his parents and had dinner with them and one of my SIL's and her son. Most of my nieces and nephews came over later and all the kids opened their gifts. There was very little drama surprisingly. We are going back over on Saturday and doing Christmas for the adults.....so many people!!!

JBDamonM

@kmc84 - thanks for your sympathies. Luckily once we got to DHs families we did have a fun day. I'm really sad today though - we didn't even get a family photo yesterday (we got some of LO thankfully) not to mention all of the running around was too exhausting to be fun. The only upside to this is its the kick in the gut I needed to stand up to my family and make things better moving forward. This change is long overdue.

JBDamonM

That was actually only part 1 of my recap. Part 2 - for your entertainment; compliments of my in-laws. MIL shows up yesterday and shortly thereafter tells me how she did not bring Molly's gift. "It would've been too complicated." Um ---ok !?!?! However it was not too complicated for her to bring gifts for all 7 of her other grand kids. Meanwhile she had told DH that she bought her a leapfrog learning thing. Then she tells me yesterday "yeah I got Molly a bouncy chair. Ya know - one of those things she can jump up and down in. It plays music and stuff...." All while i am thinking; great - you bought her a jumperoo. Had you EVER looked at my registry when I was pregnant you would have known that I registered and got of those. And ironically Molly's been using it for 4 months already. Grrrrrr. Seriously -wtf?!?! She also said how she was having a hard time putting it together. (Note; why in gods name would she put it together!?!?) moment 2 - I blatantly caught my SIL re-gifting the Christmas gift I have her daughter last year to our other nephew. Again - wtf? This may have gone unoticed had her bratty child not moped last year when I gave it to her that Santa had brought the same thing for her sister. (So I guess technically she may have re-gifted the Santa one) but still.....TACKY!

Mayzie15

JBDamonM said:

My response will be long (warning).......

My Christmas with Molly was AWESOME. She was more into the Santa gifts than we thought and DH and I had a blast with her! So fun

My Christmas as a whole SUCKED. I really hate this holiday, the entire meaning gets lost because people get selfish. DH and I fight every single year, but this year was an eye opening breaking point for me. We fight about making three stops. He gets mad because his one holiday with his family (Christmas Day) always winds up being shared with mine, because we have to do Christmas Morning with my mom and sisters (gift exchange)......I thought it would be fine this year as we would be up anyways with Molly. Wrong!

We were having so much fun - it sucked cutting it short. DH was sompissed that we could not have our own family time that he was threatening to not go with me (over dramatic anyone).....so when we got there I told my entire family this was the last year I was doing this, they said "yeah ok, next year you just don't have to eat when you are here.....well just do gifts" and my favorite from my sister "you just need to get up earlier, I've been up since 5 AM." Um - no. Or I could just take some time for MY own family on Chrisymas. Why can't they get it? What makes this all worse? We have this argument every year, and Christmas Eve we do with my dad. And it SUcKS, and he's ungrateful and makes rude comments. So I make myself crazy and put a strain on my marriage for someone who can't appreciate it. In reality if we could do Christmas Eve with my mom and company - everything would work out. This is why I am not a fan of Christmas and glad I have another year to formulate a plan tha won't invoke fighting with my husband!
Just grateful we did have some good time withiLO in the morning, even if we wanted more!

Please excuse lack of paragraphs - damn iPad.

Oh I can sooo relate to this post. DS is only a little over 4 months. Christmas Eve is at my SIL with her children who are 12 and 15 and she has told us it's too hard for HER kids to travel seriously? We have a Rock n play, a bouncer, blankets, toys - basically we pack the whole house to go somewhere - I know you ladies can relate. Christmas is at DH parents house so we pack up again! Not to mention we go to midnight mass too. I loved my first Christmas with my LO but he's tired and doesn't sleep in strange places so we are all so tired now. We have a small home so we don't have a lot of room for the whole family in our house. I told MH we have to rethink this next year it's too much to do. I would rather it just be us, or only do one outing either Chrismas day or Christmas Eve but not both! I hope you ladies had a good Christmas

CarrieB.

I can relate to all the family drama. I love christmas, but it can be complicated. Christmas Eve is always at my grandmas and she has these awful dogs. DH is allergic, so he stayed a my parents house w DD2, while I briefly took DD1, just to say hi. The dogs jumped on her and she cried. Ugh! Then onChristmas day morning, we have to go pick up MIL which is an hour trip there and back to my parents' house. She buys us all this crap every year which I hate. I feel like after having a second kid, everything just annoys me more.

But Christmas really was great. DD1 had so much fun and loved her presents and the attention and it was great getting help w DD2

pb_bride

@JBDamonM - so sorry that the holidays are such a stressful time for you and YH.  Perhaps you can just draw a line somewhere for next year. If all these people are just going to be rude etc, just tell them you are not going to see them and that's it.  At some point, you just can't keep on bending over backwards for people!

phishgirl29

Xmas Eve we go to a restaurant to do the 7 fishes Italian dinner with my family, but we had to leave early (8:45) as to not completely ruin LO's bedtime routine.  It sucked.  The next morning O's cold worsened, he threw up his first feeding because he had so much mucus in his nose, and his cough was really bad the whole time we did presents.  We cooked Christmas dinner, packed it up, the baby and a couple of toys just to reheat everything at my SILs house because DH doesn't want his father at our house because he smell like an ash tray.  

Next year, we are staying home too. It's just too damn hard traveling with a LO. Not to mention that next year, I'm not planning on packing up a 1.5 year old, taking him away from his new toys, just to be completely inconvenienced.  F**k everyone.  It's time to make new traditions.

JBDamonM

@pb_bride - that is exactly my husbands argument......he feels we bend over backwards and its not appreciated. I don't think my family does it out of spite or to be nasty, but I don't know why they can't understand that we want time alone. @phishgirl29 - amen sister. And my dad smells like an ash tray too. It's gross and added to my annoyance with spending Christmas Eve with him.

Robeano

We are still doing Christmas, yikes. We started Christmas Eve with friends coming over after our evening service at church. That worked out well, Hannah fell asleep on the drive home and slept through our mini party.

Christmas Day we opened gifts as a family, Hannah was really not interested in gifts, it was quite funny, she really only wanted to eat the gift tags and cruise around the coffee table. Then we were off to my mom's. It went well, Hannah had a decent nap, and she even went to sleep at a decent time so we ended up staying there till midnight.

Boxing Day, we tried to sleep in a bit today, but we were all pretty tired. We went to hubby's parents for a whole nuther Christmas. Hannah napped like crap, which sucks. But it was pretty decent. Hubby's family isn't fantastic at gift giving, but I've come to terms with it. The big issue was that DH's WHOLE family (there was 22 of us) came in the afternoon for a big family Christmas. Normally I'd be all over that, but I think Hannah got wicked over-stimulation and was quite cranky for her. So 20 adults, 5 kids and 4 dogs in an average 1000sq foot house, thank heavens IL's have a basement!!! So it was fun, but it was a bit much, and MIL broke her rib on the 23rd, hubby's back is sore and I swear half the family was just feeling off. So there was some stress about having this amazing perfect family dinner (I'd so be fine with just simple meals, but whatever lol)

Tomorrow, we got to my Grandma and Grandpa's. This get together will be pretty large, loud and possibly a bit crude, depends on if my two horrible uncles are there or not. But their family right?

But overall I LOVED having a first Christmas with Hannah, she is my little darling and I'm looking forward to introducing her to her new toys in the next few weeks

luvboston

JB the time has come to go tell people to take a long hike off a small peer. This amount of stress is not healthy. As for your mil I would totally show up at her house and ask for Los gift but I am a nasty witch.

kzawisl

Grab the popcorn, ladies:
My family and DH's family is scattered all across the country, and we decided not to travel for Christmas. My m spent Xmas morning with my sister and her family in TX and then flew to ATL to be with us for the rest of the day and stay a few more days. My brother also lives in GA...we don't speak. He's made a lot of bad life choices, and I didn't want that around my kids. They're 18 months old and he has never met them. Every time my mom visits, she wants to have him over to my house, and I say no. I decided to be the bigger person and invite him for Xmas dinner.
He asks if he can bring his girlfriend...I begrudgingly say yes.
They show up 40 min late, but brought wine, which I thought was a nice gesture. My brother looks nice--clean, pressed khakis and a nice button down and sweater. Girlfriend immediately asks to use the bathroom. Fine...they had a 90 minute drive. 15 min later she is in the bathroom again. Then we start opening gifts. My mom got her a purse, and she started moving all her stuff from her current purse to the new one. Then she says she got a necklace for Xmas that isn't her style, and she's like to give it to my mom. Then she can't find it. She spends the next 20 min obsessively checking both purses. Then goes out to the at to look for it, then to the bathroom again. Fast forward 20-30 min, goes to the car AGAIN and then the bathroom. Finally at 9 pm I tell them they have to leave, because I have to get up early for work. She stands up and practically falls over, and is slurring her words (after two glasses of white wine?).
I'm about 85% sure she was doing some kind of drugs in my house, yes?
So. Merry Christmas?

pb_bride

@kzawisl - that's quite a story! What did your mom think?

kzawisl

@pb_bride my mom is such a sweet lady, and (how do I put this nicely?) generally oblivious. Case in point: when I was 17, I got caught drinking at a concert. I told her I was just HOLDING a drink for a friend. She believed me. When DH and I told her we thought girlfriend was on drugs, she agreed, but would never have made that assumption herself.

JBDamonM

@kzawisl - you win for most awkward event. Wow. And yeah - I would agree with you - there was nothing good going on in your bathroom. Who does that at all? but even worse to do it in the home of someone with such young kids.

queenbone

We had a great Christmas. It was a very Octonauts Christmas for DS2. We had a nice leisurely morning opening gifts punctuated by skype sessions with DH's parents, SIL's fam, and BIL's fam. DH made eggs benedict (I love poached eggs on Christmas morning!) Then we went to my mom's for Christmas dinner with her side of the family.

(I was thinking we ought to invite BIL and SIL to come out with their families next Christmas. I have a brilliant plan on how we could make a guest room here so it would be affordable to come out for BIL. SIL and her H have no kids so they can afford a hotel. Then MIL mentioned that next year she is either going to come to our house or BIL's house for Christmas. Not on your life, lady, unless you are on your meds for at least 6 mo prior.  I'm pretty sure that won't happen since she upset DH a couple days before Christmas by telling him how she took some online test which told her she isn't bipolar and so she went off her meds again. It's an endless cycle of sadness and frustration.)

queenbone

Can I just say that I love the theme of this thread, forget everyone next year, we're doing our own Christmas with our own little family. I love it, ladies! Stand your ground! We can't please everyone, and turns need to be taken once you are married. It just isn't practical to see everyone in a 1-2 day period.