Dealing with In-Laws

What is your strategy for coping with your IL's during the holidays?

Well, this year, my strategy with my entire family has been to take control of the situation.  I have separated the holiday celebrations for both my FOO and IL's by an entire week.  I am hoping that it will lead to less stress.  So far so good. When I am spending time with my IL"s, my current strategy is to try to deal with their unacceptable behaviors and passive aggressive comments myself and not putting DH in the middle.  I am not looking forward to revealing the gender of our baby (its a boy) b/c FIL has some sick delusion that the baby should have his name. Ughhh.  DH and I have chosen a name, baby boy is going to be named after his father.

We are planning on arriving at the holiday gatherings ready to leave. As soon as things go south we are out of there.

Part of me is hoping things go south early this year.

I think next year I may consider flying south.

Can you tell I need some sleep?

Robin

Arrive on time (or shortly thereafter) and leave as soon as feasibly possible, keep my kids and DH close to me (an agreement we all have) to avoid having one of us cornered  and "talked to" with no escape (especially for my DD-13 and DS-16). 

We rarely drink and never at family parties (and they love to comment on it, to us, to the kids)  as they are a bunch of boozers and in the past there have been fights (physical) between the others, but we have always managed to get out of there before trouble starts.

 

My MIL is almost 77, and we have been hit hard out here in the Pacific Northwest with the snow storms. She was almost daily on the cell phone with dh fussing about how she was going to drive to my BIL's house (we live up in the Seattle/Tacoma area) and he lives down on the Washington State side of the Columbia River looking toward Portland (so I usually say Portland OR) I've been out of school since the 16th because of the weather. So I offered to drive her down on the 23rd and then come home. Then dh & I would drive back down on the morning of the 25th. That is what I should of instilled on doing it my~~my plan would of worked out 1000% better then what happen.

MIL whinnied to DH/BIL, so I got over ruled (again) dh got off work on the morning of the 24th and then went and got her. And we got to spend time with her (her driving me NUTS! as usual) I was knitting caps for dh's 2 nieces, had the one for the younger niece complete and was rushing to finish the oldest niece (finished it Christmas night before I got to go to bed after I got to BIL's) MIL went around reorganizing my house and vacuuming my floors. And I just sat on my butt knitting away. We started dinner and went to my church (the church that dh & I were married at) then after we came home, we open some gifts with my oldest dd & sil oldest granddaughter (MIL complained about them coming so late,but my sil didn't get off work until almost 8 pm. so it was then or after we got back on Friday and I refused to give up my entire Christmas to my In-laws)

So we got up on Christmas morning and set off by 10 am. We ran into snow a little out side of Vancouver WA and the closer we got to town the worse it got. By the time we got into my BIL neighborhood, we got stuck and need the chains. I told dh I would NEVER do this EVER again! NOT EVER!!!!!! I was bored out of my mind watching while they all open their gifts as they had no gifts for me. The family (MIL/BIL decided to cut back in gift giving, and I was one of the cuts) So no to next year. Already. And I got stuck sleeping on a old hard sofa, but at least BIL makes a mean stiff screw driver!

Yesterday went better coming home, we had rain coming back. So we made it home safe.

~Sam