Friday, December 11, 2009
In need of advice
I need some advice from you married folk out there. How do you split up your holidays between both your family and your spouse's family? What about the extended families? Do you try to do holidays with them too or just with the immediate families? How do you get on the same page as your siblings with their in-laws as well? Just wondering.
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9 comments:
GOOD POST! I am lost. In my family, the married kids kind of did their own thing and came to my parent's sometimes (but they always lived out of town). That way they could develop their own traditions with their kids and such. Ryan's family all gets together at grandma Lawanna's every year. It's so hard. This year is REALLY tough because both families are wanting us christmas eve/morning. However.. we have never spent christmas with my family. So.. I think we're just going to have to do what's fair. Decisions.. decisions. I say coordinate with your siblings as much as possible.. but you're never going to make everyone 100% happy.
Generally we try and hit both families during the day. Which is tough and tiring. This christmas we are spending all christmas eve with the sharples and christmas day with the child's -
I have to ditto the 'graham family' - you never going to make everyone happy. EXCEPT - you first priority is to make you and the hubby happy. :)
My family does every other year. Makes things much easier and less stressful. Sometimes things come up and we miss a year, but its all understandable. Haven't been any issues yet.
What has worked out for us (unintentionally) is to do Thanksgiving with Carl's family. And we've done a few Christmas's with my family. My family is so spread out though, that we don't get together very often. And now that we have kids, we try to avoid traveling in the winter, because of all the snow. So now we just stay home. Since both of our parents live so far from us, we tend to not go to their houses. Everyone has been able to understand that. Sometimes what we've done is gone to wherever the bulk of family is meeting and call it good. We now understand why family reunions are in the summer. Hopefully all family members realize that as children grow up and get married it's harder to get everyone together. And that's why people mail presents for Christmas. Hopefully this helps.
I don't think there is a magic solution! You'll never make everyone happy! It's easy while you don't have kids to visit both. but once you have kids you just have to decide with Matt what works for you guys.
I wish my parents lived close but in your situation I don't know because I wouldn't visit both on the same day especially with kids! To me that sounds too stressful and I want to enjoy it and not be worried about hauling kids all over town! It's tough! But your family comes first but that's hard when you don't want to hurt feelings and you want to please your family and everybody else. Good luck! I don't know if you'll be able to coincide with us because I'm trying to coincide with my sister that lives in Chicago so we will be hit and miss during the holidays.
My personal preference would be to do Christmas morning by ourselves with our own kids (once we have kids), spend Christmas Eve with one family and Christmas Day with the other family. And do the extended family parties on a day other than Christmas and Christmas Eve.
Now if only that would actually work with parents' and siblings' schedules, it would be a dream come true.
I hear ya!! Scott and I have decided to move somewhere warm and celebrate Festivious and forget all about Christmas and plans and making everyone happy... I think this will work well :) Good Luck!
I have thought of that too! Just going on vacation for Christmas! But I do love being home for Christmas too.
For our immediate families, we alternate years. One year we will spend with Nate's family, the next year with mine. So this year we are doing Christmas eve with Nate's family and Christmas Day with mine. However, we are lucky enough that both of our parents live really close so we will still probably drop in on the other family for a short visit sometime on Christmas day. As for the extended family, they usually have a party the week before Christmas so we try to make it to those if we can. Between the 2 days of christmas festivities we usually have some lay over where we get to see all the siblings. If not, we hope to catch up later during the holidays or the next year.
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