xmas family fun

For some people, the holidays are full of all of the things we hear in holiday songs, like good will, cheer, happiness, etc. For others, the holidays can sometimes be more headache than they're worth.

Unfortunately, our sentiments towards this time of the year tend to fall towards the latter experience. In all honestly, it's not because we are grumpy, moody, or have a negative attitude towards the holidays. In fact, we love doing things for our children and seeing them experience the holidays. I just wish that our relatives felt the same way about us, and had the same intentions that we have.

Instead, we have relatives who feel that Christmas is all about spending money, and others that take it a step further and compare how much you spend on one another. Then we have other relatives who feel that everything should revolve around them, and to hell with anyone else's feelings. So, for the first time, we decided to try the holidays on our own this year, spending the time with our own children, and not concern ourselves with the travel and stress.

I have to admit that finance also played a part in our decision, as traveling during the holidays is never cheap. But for the most part, this is a decision that was made so that I don't have to see my wife crying on Christmas Eve because her divorced parents can't just get along for one night of the year.

So, I thought we were safe. Aside from a few uncomfortable telephone conversations in which we had to explain why we weren't going "home" for the holidays, our interactions with relatives have been more or less pleasant. Until today! Today, my wife received a phonecall from a relative complaining about one of the gifts we had sent her. This was a personal gift, a homemade DVD with photo slideshows of our kids. Her complaint? That there weren't any photos with my her in them. She then went off on a tangent, explaining that this was an attempt at making the kids forget their grandmother, or that we intentionally didn't take enough photos of her when she last visited. Good grief! It wasn't something that I even thought of while putting the DVD together.

This was a DVD of our kids, and that should have been enough. I guarantee you that we won't hear any complaints from any other family members, even though most of them also don't appear in the slideshows. But they understand that the earth doesn't revolve around them. You don't get too many photos of relatives when you live 1,000 miles away from them, and that was the whole point of sending this DVD - so that they could see photos of our kids. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that as much as this complaint seemed to come from left-field, it doesn't surprise me to hear who it was coming from.

Chalk up another reason for not going "home" for the holidays...
Sorry for the personal rant - had to get this off of my chest.