xmas with the relatives...in our neck of the woods!

Traveling home for Christmas has always been bittersweet. On the one hand, you get to see relatives and exchange gifts and stories. We see people that we only see once a year, and everyone is (for the most part) in a good mood. But on the other hand, it is stressful and expensive to travel during the holidays, requires that we take time off of work (that we often would prefer to take for an *actual* vacation), and the kids only come home with more useless toys to take up space back home.

We had already made up our minds not to visit for Christmas this year. We visited during the summer instead, and hoped that would be adequate. As the end of the summer nears, our relatives have been dropping the usual guilt bombs about us not coming home for the holidays. I think we're doing pretty good at deflecting their probing, though, since we can honestly say that we just can't afford it at this time.

Fortunately, my parents have taken their lemons and made lemonade. My father called me yesterday to inform me that he had traded one of his timeshares for a week in a condo near us. They'll be here during the week between Christmas and New Year's. So while they won't be here on Christmas Day, we'll get to see them during the holidays after all. Although I was a bit against the idea at first, I have begun to appreciate the fact that my father bought his timeshare in Vegas. With my parents' overall fascination with gambling, taking several Vegas vacations each year didn't seem like such a good idea. But I can't argue with the trades that he has gotten out of it. Last summer, he traded some of it for our trip to Disney World, and now he has swapped another week so that we can spend the holidays together.

So this holiday season should be much less stressful than the usual, thanks to the fact that my parents were willing to come to us. Now if I could just get my mother-in-law to do the same...