Posted in FLYING and HGP

ARGHHHH!  How crazy can your families make you?  Tis the season to work at not making me jolly!!!

Let me start from the beginning.  Usually sometime the first weekend after Thanksgiving, I get together with my grandma, my mom and my sister to do Christmas cards together.  It is a bit crazy because my family are all scatterbrains but I'm used to them and just planning the thing helps me to get MY cards out.  I usually try to do something in the crock-pot or lasagna because I usually have to take the meal to grandmas.  Since it is my idea, I don't want her to have to do any work especially since she has usually overdone it for Thanksgiving. 

Well, this year that first weekend after Thanksgiving came and went.  Dh with his stomach flu just made me a little leery about going anywhere and I definitely didn't want to give that to my grandparents.  Well, this weekend has started and I thought I'd better get the gang together. 

First I call my sister because she is the really the only schedule that we have to work around.  She finished med school last summer and just started in a new office in the past month.  She says she'll get back with me.  In the mean time I call mom and grandma for a heads up so they don't plan to do something else and we get started talking about the "gift situation". 

Background:  Mom went through a difficult divorce over the summer and because of it she lost her job.  She is struggling financially and I think my grandparents are helping her financially and therefore they are struggling too, so gifts this year should really be out of the question.  Honestly, that is alright with me because I feel like we are stuffed to the gills with junk, the boys don't need more toys and more S.T.U.F.F. so I suggested that we draw names (knowing that it isn't Christmas for my materialistic family if we can't give gifts). 

Well, my sister gets wind of this and thinks that is a great idea but she wants to add her INLAWS (that I don't even know that live in another state) to the draw.  I nicely said that I didn't like that idea and she (the new doc making a ton of money a year who just bought not one but two new electric cars AND a new house AND flew to TN over Thanksgiving and has season hockey tickets) suggests that maybe we just not give presents this year because in her situation money is really tight!!!! (rolling eyes). 

I nicely, calmly, and trying not to judge, said that was okay with me and that I would have a talk with the boys about it so they will understand that this Christmas was going to be different.  But OH NO -- they didn't like that idea at all!!  "The kids have to have gifts!"   ARGH -- WHO SAID? and honestly what is that teaching them AND my boys aren't like that!!!! 

On one hand, I have the monstrous sized family saying they will NOT draw names and that they will not NOT give gifts and on the other end, I have my family not giving gifts yet still being materialistic with my boys.  Honestly, these are the things that can make a person soooooo insane at Christmastime.  This is just NOT what Christmas is about!!!  Sometimes living with unbelievers is just difficult! 

HA!  My family made me pinky promise that we wouldn't exchange presents (in past years grandma ALWAYS renege on her end when we have tried to make it easier on everybody) but they didn't make my boys pinky promise!!  Our gifts weren't much anyhow and they are mostly homemade.  I figure if they are giving my boys gifts, then my boys have to give a gift in return!  Seems only fair and HOPEFULLY it will help my boys to concentrate on the GIVING instead of the getting and taking the focus off the materialism that my side of the family likes to push. 

What makes me even crazier is that I already had all their gifts made and wrapped before they ever even started this conversation.  Who rightly decides these things 22 days before Christmas (see they are scatterbrains)?  You know when you have this many presents to buy or make, you have to get started early.  So if you hear about some crazy lady in the Looney tune farm that is singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs in pig Latin, taking baths in eggnog and throwing gingerbread cookies at everyone you'll know it is me!!!  Oh and the Christmas card party, it is off too because everyone is just too busy to get together!   ARGH!