This past weekend, however, WAS crazy. Since 1999, my Decembers have been a flurry of activity, being double and triple booked for Christmas parties each of the 4 or 5 weekends of the month. Both my wonderful husband and I come from divorced (and mostly remarried) parents. With all that dysfunction comes a lot of holiday expectations. There's always the party with my Mom and Step-father, the party with my Step-father's family (who are all great), with my Mom's side of the family, with my Dad and Step-mother (which has recently been eliminated - their decision, not ours), with my Dad's side of the family, with my wonderful husband's Dad and Step-mother, and my former employer had a party and we each threw parties at our respective restaurants. And then, there's the Christmas Eve service at church and, starting last year, the children's musical at church. Finally, there's Christmas day, which we ALWAYS spend at home, because its no fun to open all the presents and then leave.
This year, we only have/had a few parties: with my Dad's side of the family, with my Mom's side of the family, with my Mom and Step-father and siblings and, eventually one with my wonderful husband's family - that still isn't set.
Over Thanksgiving, my wonderful husband's brother asked him to help him clean up and and make his desktop and laptop computers more efficient. They live in Sterling Heights and we live in Grand Rapids. My wonderful husband thought it would be easiest to go there and do what needed to be done. My sister-in-law insisted that our whole family come over to their house so that the kids could play together. Then, all of us were invited to a birthday party of a different nephew, who lives in Holly. And, there was an extra practice scheduled for the musical at church on Saturday morning.
So, Friday night, my husband has to work the closing shift - until 4am. I spent Friday evening packing and making a fruit salad and cutting vegetables. Saturday, I had to get up at 7:30, to get everything else ready that couldn't be done the night before. I let my wonderful husband sleep for as long as possible. So, we all loaded up (including the dog) and went to my mother-in-law's house to drop off the dog, the husband and the girls. Then I took my son to church for practice, went to Meijer to pick up some baby food and juice and dropped my chopped veggies off to my brother's house so he could bring them to the party for me. Then I went back to my mother-in-law's house so that my wonderful husband could go deliver the rest of the popcorn from the Boy Scout's popcorn sale.
Then we made the 2 1/2 hour drive to Holly and did the birthday party thing. It was a nice party, but very busy. My baby just started the separation anxiety thing (I've never had to deal with that before!) and with that, she had 2 offended Grandparents. Can she help that they've only seen her twice? After we left the party that ended late, we drove another hour to brother and sister-in-law's house for dinner and computer stuff. I got the kids ready and in bed by 9:30. My son fell asleep by about 10, which wasn't bad, since he was sleeping on an air mattress with 2 of his other cousins and another cousin was in the bed. My oldest daughter fell asleep around 1:00am and the baby never slept for more than 1 hour at a time.
She cried all night long. As a result, I only got a cumulative 3 hours of sleep. Then we went to church, where my wonderful husband proceeded to fall asleep about 1,000 times. Then we went back to the house, where my husband worked on finishing up computer stuff until 1:30. At which time, we said our good-byes and made the 3 1/2 hour drive to Greenville. We had to stop 3 times! My oldest daughter slept for about 3 hours, which was definitely necessary.
We had a good time at the Christmas party and left at 7:00pm, at which time, my daughter had already had at least 2 meltdowns and the baby had already offended almost every adult there with her mommy clingy-ness. We drove 45 minutes to my mother-in-law's house to pick up the dog and then another 20 minutes home.
We got home, got the kids in bed, unpacked and crashed. The baby slept all night, until 5:00am and we were back to business as usual Monday morning, with a 2 hour school delay.
Yeah, not so crazy...Yet.
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