In a way this post is a Commencement part 2. Because a lot of what occured over Christmas had to do, I think, with the commencement.

So the following week my sister’s family came down to spend Christmas with my mom, but on the way, my Uncle (one who also shouldn’t have known about the commencement) called her and told her about it. This left me with really quite an odd dilemma… I knew she would find out eventually, but I never really thought it would occur less than a week after the ceremony and just 3 days before Christmas!!! I at this point no longer even wanted to go to my mother’s house for dinner, and I certainly didn’t want to go for just “hanging out sake.” They convinced me to go for dinner, and luckily (or unluckily) they got a call from a neighbor saying their furnace went out and rushed back up directly after dinner. They were worried their pipes would freeze and burst which is a worthy concern! Because of this I didn’t have to sit around too long in the awkwardness.

For the record, when she was asking why she wasn’t invited, I didn’t really say it was because I didn’t like her or anything. I just said she didn’t do anything and I wasn’t really upset with her for anything. It is kind of implied obviously that I don’t like her in that but I didn’t actually SAY that.

While we did have dinner at my mom’s, our actual celebration is held off till New Years. The reason for this is largely because it is easier to get my daughter during this period for a longer time, but it has also made their Christmas’ easier to deal with as my sister can then go to their in-laws without concern for ours. So the following week, we drive up to her area for her to host Christmas this year. This turned out to be the real disaster…

On the Sunday, my mom calls and finds out if she has anything plan. Our thought was that we would likely eat at my sister’s that night and come back to the hotel with her family to swim. So my mom calls, and finds out that we should head over. We get there and spend 2 hours sitting around watching a Vikings game that no one cares about and then we eat. Afterwards, we go and begin to open presents (something we just assumed we would do the next day as we had about 14-16 hours to fill with new years!) By this time my daughter is tired, and cranky, and apparently sick as she puked later that night at the hotel. My daughter stops opening presents after opening half of hers before she gets bored and whiny and stops wanting to open presents. We quickly finish off the rest of the family’s presents, and pack up our stuff and head out. Only to find out that she wants us up, ready, and back at her house for breakfast by 9am in the morning!!! This is far too early as if we are lucky all of us will be up at 8am which would allow us just 1 hour to get everyone showered, and drive there just to eat a breakfast we would prefer to eat at the hotel at our leisure! So I quickly ask her if we can’t just eat the breakfast for lunch and then we would come at like 11am, a time much more reasonable for us to handle. She kindly lets us out of this and we actually return to the hotel angry that she has us all so harshly scheduled at her house that we can’t get a break and my daughter is crying because she thought we would go swimming that night, and then of course she pukes!

The next day starts out better, my mom takes my daughter to the pool early in the morning to get her some of her swimming in and we decide that because we missed swimming the day before, we should go that day, and we quickly realize that sledding needs to be left out as two huge physical activities and the swimming was far more important. So we get to my sister’s about an hour early, and tell her that we’d just rather not go sledding and we would prefer going swimming in the afternoon. My sister gets really pissed, slams her cooking around in the kitchen, refuses to talk for like an hour or two, and then forces her family to go sledding without us later in the day.

Luckily after that, the trip got a little better, we went swimming another time the following day, and my sister decided to go for a short time with her family. My daughter was extremely happy to have had the chance to swim and play with them so I’m happy we actually got that opportunity.

So yeah, the whole thing was an utter disaster, and I’m thinking likely in part due to the timing of the commencement thing. I don’t htink my sister would have gotten as huffy about the sledding thing had it not been for this issue. After all, she didn’t even particularly want to go sledding in the first place. I don’t know what is going to happen in future family events with get-togethers. As it stands I no longer wish to go up to their house. Maybe next year I will travel to see my brother with my daughter so that she has a chance to really visit with their family and maybe my sister will not be able to do such a trip and I can avoid a year. At the very least, I likely won’t see or hear from my sister for a few months, which I’m more than a little happy to know.