Yes, the holidays always seem to bring out the best and the worst in people. I've learned (and I'm teaching my daughter) to have good boundaries. For those family members who seem to thrive on drama, we meet them in a neutral place and we always have an escape plan when the BS gets too high. Carla, I'm sorry that you have a family member who is treating the kids as a pawn. Not cool. I had a brother do that with his kids, and I had to learn to just accept the loss and know I wouldn't see them. Now that they are adults with kids of their own, they've been reaching back out and we've been able to reestablish a relationship. So that's been lovely. But as I tell my daughter, I do not reward bad behavior, and I do not give into terrorist's demands. Now my family understands that I won't tolerate any BS and if people can't play nicely, they have to leave the sandbox. Ironically, instead of being bullied by those family members like when I was a kid, they now call me for advice and they always try to sway me to their side of the story. But I remain neutral. (Not my monkeys, not my circus). It can be challenging, but it's gotten easier over the years. Although, my older brother will still call me to say things like "You need to tell our dad..." or "You need to call our brother and tell him..." And I quite solidly say "I'm not going to do that." I'm happy to listen, but I refuse to get involved. And if I do have an issue, I've learned to call them out. This goes against how I was raised, especially in the Midwest where culturally we tend to be much more passive aggressive than just state things outright. But man, it's been freeing to be able to speak my mind when necessary.
This side of the family is gathering on Sunday... there will be 29 of us ranging from baby Gracie up to my Dad. We will have five littles (all under the age of 6), so that will be a blast. I've rented a meeting space at one of the hotels I use for trainings (where I know all the staff by name). I've hired a caterer to make the food. I made a Facebook events page and have posted the hotel information, the menu, and the schedule of events. I mailed hard-copy invitations with a QR code to the Facebook event page. They've all known about the event for the past six weeks. It looks like Mother Nature is going to cooperate as there is no snow forecast for this weekend in any of the areas that my family members live or here. As long as everyone plays nicely, we will have a great time! I tried to make it as stress-free and easy for people to just show up... they don't have to bring a thing. I'm did include a White Elephant gift exchange for those who want to participate, but I'm bringing extra gifts just in case. I'm also planning to play "left, right, center" with all the nieces and nephews (and about half of them know the game and were excited to play). I'll bring the camera and the tripod and hopefully get some family photos. So... I've done all I can to set it up for success. We'll see how it goes. LOL!
I'm so grateful that this is a safe place to be able to share our thoughts and feelings. Thank you, ladies! And now, I better get back to catching up with my 2023 layouts before 2024 arrives! LOL!
