After we decided that Christmas Eve with my in laws was getting us home too late for our traditions we asked my mother in law to move the time up and maybe do a brunch. Everyone is off on Christmas Eve so it seemed like a good compromise but it was not good for them. It seemed like every alternative we came up with just would not work so we just stopped going on Christmas Eve even every other year. WE started asking my in laws for a date that we could get together with them and do Christmas and every year it is the same they are just too busy for us to get together.
We have actually met at a restaurant and after dinner or lunch they put the presents in the car and told the kids to call them when they opened them! Is anyone else appalled by that? First there are a few things that bother me with this. The first being we meet at a restaurant 20 minutes from our house could they not come the 20 minutes to watch their grandkids open presents? Second aren’t the holidays about the kids so why were they getting packages in parking lots?
Now you may think my in laws run the country or something but they don’t. They have too many plans with their church, friends and my brother and sister in law and her biological child to have time for us at least that is what it seems like. For example we started asking for a date for last Christmas in early November and was told that if we could not come on Christmas Eve they would have no time in November or December to do Christmas with our family. The soonest date they had was mid-January! OK no one is that busy or they have their priorities all wrong. In an attempt last year to get my husband and our kids to see his parents we asked if they would move their 6 pm to an earlier time. She agreed to 5 she is not good at compromise.