I know, I know, it’s December. But I want to tell y’all about my Thanksgiving. I’ll say that I didn’t want my Thanksgiving post to get lost among all of the Thanksgiving posts last week, so I saved it until now. Yeah, that’s it.
We spend Thanksgiving with Andrew’s family. Partially because I don’t want to travel to the event my family goes to, and partially because I put my foot down about where we’re spending Christmas (my dad’s house) so Thanksgiving is flexible. This year, we spent Thursday with Andrew’s Dad’s extended family and then Friday was at our house.
Andrew’s sister came in to town for the holiday (she lives in California), which is unusual because she only comes around a couple times a year. She was upset that we all (Sister, MIL, FIL, Andrew and I) wouldn’t be together on Thursday, so I volunteered to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for the five of us on Friday. It just so happens that “host a family dinner for a major holiday” is one of my day zero items, and you’ll remember that I just got a new stove, so I was actually glad for the opportunity.
By some Thanksgiving miracle the turkey, vegetables (all 4), gravy, cranberry sauce and everything all managed to be finished and ready to put on the table at the same time. It was amazing. They were also just in time for SIL and MIL to get into a screaming fight and MIL to storm out in tears. Yay.
I’ve heard people tell about family fights at holidays and I always thought “No one really does that. No one would actually yell at a family member in someone else’s home and then storm out of a meal.” Well, I guess people really do that. SIL apologized to me later and I kind of brushed it off. I didn’t know what to say in response. It really ruined the mood for the meal. No one really talked much after that. Then I ducked back into the kitchen to make dessert, afterwards MIL washed half the dishes and over-loaded the dishwasher with the other half and then everyone left.
I guess it’s not unusual to have some good and some bad at a family gathering like that. I’m just not use to that kind of thing. My family doesn’t yell, especially when not in the privacy of one’s own home. I really like my ILs, I’m lucky. But learning new family dynamics is hard.
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