Holidays your thoughts!

[germaine2626]

Originally Posted by _jbub88_

First off I know your loved.

I had the same problem except from a different angle. My son lives in the inlaws city. The other side of the family is not my blood but they continually intervened into my visit with our son. We received multiple calls, texts and emails about a group dinner or visit. We said no multiple times via my big toe hurts, a Brain surgery that day, I'm running ultramarathan, etc.

They are super nice people, but my wife and I are very private people.
These visit offers went on for months. They finally conceded/stopped after I got very direct. Sadly! We simply wanted private time with my son and DIL without needling or monitoring.

I forgot to say. Also the holiday thing is a big issue too. Every family has their own special family tradition. Adding another whole family to Christmas dinner for example will suddenly cause issue, "oh we do it this way", " we eat at this time", etc.

My point is maybe your in-laws are like us????

"These visit offers went on for months."
I'm confused. Do you mean that your visits with your son went on "for months" or they asked you multiple times to have a group dinner or visit over a period of several months until "you got direct" with them?

I am also the out of town parent (ie. my son lives in his in-law city). While it can be a little annoying at time, when I have a week or ten day visit to my son & DIL and grandchildren's house and we usually see her parents once, or maybe twice, during that time.

However, it is usually because we are celebrating a holiday or a grandchild's birthday. What are my son & DIL expected to do? Leave me alone at their house while they celebrate the holiday at her parent's house with them and our joint grandchildren and later celebrate the holiday with me? Or have two separate birthday parties? One with each set of grandparents? Or have two Easter egg hunts? Or plan a party or cook-out with friends and family and only invite one set of parents? And, which set do they invite? The grandparents who live in town or the grandparents that are visiting from out of town?

[Vegabern]

Originally Posted by Pupmom

I appreciate everyones comments. Remember this was a rant. I have never shown displeasure to my daughter and her family. We realize they have 2 families to see. My point was we are always the family that accomodates without question. A few things tho-
As far as the birthday party my daughter didn't attend. She thought she could be there by 5:40. If they got there by 5PM and ordered everyone would have food by 5:30 and the earliest she would be there was 5:40 if the parent conference went off without any questions or concerns from the child's parent. Her sister in law thought that she should just skip the conference to go to her birthday dinner. This is my daughters profession and lively hood.(This family doesn't hang out and socialize at these birthday dinners- arrive , order dinner when you order beverages- eat and go home- dinner has never taken more than an hour total).

As far as her bringing a turkey to thanksgiving, I didn't think I needed to give all the details. Everyone brings food. They coordinated so everyone knew what everyone was bringing. Everyone always brings so much and no one ever takes leftovers, so this year my son in law send an email so everyone would know what everyone was bringing. For 18 people there were 2 people bringing turkeys (one deep fried and one regular) and also someone was bringing a ham. So the sister decided to bring another one. There was 60 pounds of turkey for 18 people plus a ham. No one took any food home.


Thanks for all your comments. It;s over. We will deal with whatever we need to.

I doubt it. Both my mother and my mother-in-law claim the same thing. Meanwhile we see both of them 5x as much as either of our dads. I guarantee the other family feels they make plenty of concessions.

Exhibit A. of why hubby and I swore off holidays years ago. Too many expectations by too many family members.