MsPerky

What are your plans for Dec? Assuming you survive Black Friday...

After a pretty socially quiet couple of months here (I didn't mind), ours will be busy. We have parties on the 5th, 16th and 19th. Motown the Musical on the 6th. Kiawah Island SC weekend of the 11th (+1 is running a half marathon there), his birthday the 17th (not sure what I'm doing for that yet), our traditional Christmas Eve dinner out the 24th, and our traditional James Bond New Year's Eve gala the 31st. In addition, will have dinner at some point with my ex and his gf, who arrive for a visit the middle of the month from Argentina.

robb

I will be doing a lot of shopping for Christmas in the next few weeks. I need to decorate my house, decorate the school campus, we are having a Christmas party on the 19th and then we will have Christmas eve at my sister's and Christmas at my parents both in Rhode Island.

skunkworks

For the first time in the last 19 years my wife and I didn’t host a Thanksgiving dinner and venue (we’ve normally hosted 17-27 family and guests). None of our younger relations volunteered to carry on with the festivities.
As a result we had an enjoyable dinner at a nice restaurant with several friends without the stress of providing for vegans, special needs, travel with housing, and dealing with ongoing family disturbances. It was a very pleasurable experience and will probably be repeated in the future.

gary

Lainey

Good for you, glad you enjoyed your dining out. It's a shame that no one stepped up to host a dinner. My max for hosting is about 8-10. All went well yesterday with nine.

Between now and Christmas we have family gatherings, a work holiday party, doctor appointments (might as well since deductible has been met ) as well as shopping to do. I will order as much as I can online. My granddaughter wants mostly gift cards and I'm hoping daughter in law picks up gifts for the grandson that I can buy from her.

Kyras

My honey, Ricky, has now met my son, daughter in-law and daughter, twice, along with my ex husband, his honey and my daughter's honey, once. We'll go for one night to my son's for a late Christmas on December 29th, for one more gathering in Mountain View, CA. Otherwise, December is up for grabs. I'd like to rent a motorhome so Ricky and I can go out to the desert for a couple of nights and ride our motorcycles.

MsPerky

Glad things are going well with Ricky!

Yes, the holidays are nice, but when some family dynamics don't work well, it can be uncomfortable. A kind of forced togetherness. We had some of that in my family. My mother hadn't hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in quite some time, and all of us are spread out across the country in at least five states. I expect that, now that she is gone, there won't be much reason for everyone to congregate in this area. The +1 and I have set up our own little traditions, like Christmas Eve out at a nice restaurant. And we will visit members individually as we can.

gomarlins3

We very much enjoy Thanksgiving being just the two of us. We were invited over to a friends house, but after the fiasco there last year, we immediately said "No thank you."

This month will be very different for us. To start, I am flying to Sacramento this coming weekend for the California International Marathon (relay) while my mother is moving from South Carolina to live with us for a couple of weeks while she finds her own place here in the Boise area. We haven't spent more than a few days together in 28 years so this should be "interesting". We have never had any family live closer than 5 hours to us an no one has been within 10 hours of us for 11 years. Don't really know how this is going to go.

Three more weeks of work until our Christmas break and another half marathon here at home before Christmas.

MsPerky

^ Cool on the running. Looks like the +1's team may run a relay in western NC rather than Charlottesville in April. More challenging. As for your mother, at least she will be in her own place. Very important. I hope it goes well.

Yaupon

Same is true in our family...none of the younger relations are willing to host holiday festivities. I don't get it...did they not get the memo? Maybe it is a generational thing. For many years the younger folks were more than willing to attend family functions hosted by grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, etc. But now that our generation has stopped hosting holiday festivities the family functions have come to a screeching halt. Sorry for the bah humbug rant....back to your regularly scheduled programming.

dlq04

I could make a long list of things my parents felt I should do that were 'traditions' that I never agreed with. And, I suspect my kids can do the same. Times change. Personally, there are times when I think the holidays instead of being happy times are the most stressful of the the entire year.